期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:1998
卷号:95
期号:21
页码:12498-12503
DOI:10.1073/pnas.95.21.12498
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:By using antisense RNA, Lck-deficient transfectants of a T helper 2 (Th2) clone have been derived and shown to have a qualitative defect in the T cell receptor signaling pathway. A striking feature observed only in Lck-deficient T cells was the presence of a constitutively tyrosine-phosphorylated 32-kDa protein. In the present study, we provide evidence that this aberrantly hyperphosphorylated protein is p34cdc2 (cdc2) a key regulator of cell-cycle progression. Lck-deficient transfectants expressed high levels of cdc2 protein and its regulatory units, cyclins A and B. The majority of cdc2, however, was tyrosine-phosphorylated and therefore enzymatically inactive. The transfectants were significantly larger than the parental cells and contained 4N DNA. These results establish that a deficiency in Lck leads to a cell-cycle arrest in G2. Moreover, transfected cells were hypersusceptible to apoptosis when activated through the T cell receptor. Importantly, however, this hypersusceptibility was largely reversed in the presence of T cell growth factors. These findings provide evidence that, in mature T lymphocytes, cell-cycle progression through the G2-M check point requires expression of the Src-family protein tyrosine kinase, Lck. This requirement is Lck-specific; it is observed under conditions in which the closely related Fyn kinase is expressed normally, evincing against a redundancy of function between these two kinases.