Historical Background
Phosphorylation and dephosphorylation of eukaryotic initiation factor 2α (eIF2α) control the initiation of mRNA translation in eukaryotic cells, particularly in response to cellular stress. Early studies on the role of initiation factors in translational control date back to the 1960s. In 1968, Miller and Schweet reported a decrease in reticulocyte ribosomal activity upon salt washing (Miller and Schweet 1968). This first observation led to the isolation of translation initiation factors from rabbit reticulocytes and liver ribosomes (Shafritz et al. 1970). Some years later, it was shown that the eukaryotic translation initiation factor eIF2 consists of three subunits: eIF2α, eIF2β, and eIF2γ (Schreier et al. 1977). In the same year, phosphorylation...
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Acknowledgments
The work in our group is funded by Breast Cancer Campaign grant (2010NovPR13), Health Research Board (grant number HRA-POR-2014-643), Belgium Grant (IAP 7/32), a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) grant co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund (grant Number 13/RC/2073), and EU H2020 MSCA ITN-675448 (TRAINERS). K.M. is funded by an Irish Research Council Fellowship (grant number GOIPD/2014/53).
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Pakos-Zebrucka, K., Gorman, A.M., Chintha, C., Chevet, E., Samali, A., Mnich, K. (2016). EIF2S1. In: Choi, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6438-9_101587-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6438-9_101587-1
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