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Updated: Jun 11, 2026

Yeast As a Chassis for Developing Functional Assays to Study Human P53
Published on: August 4, 2019
Phylogeny and function of the invertebrate p53 superfamily
Rachael Rutkowski1, Kay Hofmann, Anton Gartner
1Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression, College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 5EH, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
The origin of the p53 superfamily predates animal evolution and first appears in unicellular Flagellates. Invertebrate p53 superfamily members appear to have a p63-like domain structure, which seems to be evolutionarily ancient. The radiation into p53, p63, and p73 proteins is a vertebrate invention. In invertebrate models amenable to genetic analysis p53 superfamily members mainly act in apoptosis regulation in response to genotoxic agents and do not have overt developmental functions. We summarize the literature on cnidarian and mollusc p53 superfamily members and focus on the function and regulation of Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans p53 superfamily members in triggering apoptosis. Furthermore, we examine the emerging evidence showing that invertebrate p53 superfamily proteins also have functions unrelated to apoptosis, such as DNA repair, cell cycle checkpoint responses, compensatory proliferation, aging, autophagy, and innate immunity.
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