Abstract
Follicular lymphoma is the most common human B-cell malignancy in the United States and Western Europe1. Most of the tumours contain t(14;18) chromosome translocations involving the human bcl-2 gene2–5. Translocation of bcl-2 sequences from chromosome 18 into the transcriptionally active immunoglobulin locus at chromosome band 14q32 in B cells deregulates bcl-2 gene expression, resulting in the accumulation of high levels of bcl-2 messenger3. Human bcl-2 transcripts generate two proteins, p26 bcl-2-α and p22 bcl-2-β, by virtue of alternative splice-site selection2. Both proteins have in common their first 196 NH2-terminal amino acids but share little similarity with other sequences in a data bank2,4. Although the biological and biochemical functions of bcl-2 are unknown, recent subcellular localization studies indi-cate that p26 bcl-2-α associates with cellular membranes, con-sistent with a stretch of hydrophobic amino acids in its carboxy terminus1,2,6. The bcl-2 gene may represent a novel oncogene having no known retroviral counterpart. Here we demonstrate the oncogenic potential of bcl-2 through a gene transfer approach.
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Reed, J., Cuddy, M., Slabiak, T. et al. Oncogenic potential of bcl-2 demonstrated by gene transfer. Nature 336, 259–261 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1038/336259a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/336259a0
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