Functions
Tumor-suppressor genes, or more precisely, the proteins for which they code, either have a dampening or repressive effect on the regulation of the cell cycle or promote apoptosis, and sometimes do both. The functions of tumor-suppressor proteins fall into several categories including the following:
- Repression of genes that are essential for the continuing of the cell cycle. If these genes are not expressed, the cell cycle does not continue, effectively inhibiting cell division.
- Coupling the cell cycle to DNA damage. As long as there is damaged DNA in the cell, it should not divide. If the damage can be repaired, the cell cycle can continue.
- If the damage cannot be repaired, the cell should initiate apoptosis (programmed cell death) to remove the threat it poses for the greater good of the organism.
- Some proteins involved in cell adhesion prevent tumor cells from dispersing, block loss of contact inhibition, and inhibit metastasis. These proteins are known as metastasis suppressors.
- DNA repair proteins are usually classified as tumor suppressors as well, as mutations in such their genes increase the risk of cancer, for example mutations in HNPCC, MEN1 and BRCA. Furthermore, increased mutation rate from decreased DNA repair leads to increased inactivation of other tumor suppressors and activation of oncogenes.
Read more about this topic: Tumor Suppressor Gene
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“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
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—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functions ... extends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)