Cell-type- and promoter-dependent ts phenotype of p53 Val135

The p53 mutant Val135 is widely considered to have a wild-type (wt) phenotype at 32.5 degrees C, but not at 37 degrees C. The ability of wt murine p53 and its Val135 mutant to modulate transcription from the muscle-specific creatine kinase promoter (-3.3 kb pMCK), from a reporter construct containing two copies of the p53-binding DNA element from within MCK (p50-2), and from the interleukin-6 (IL-6) promoter (pIC225) was evaluated in transient transfection experiments in CV1 and HeLa cells. In CV1 cells, wt p53 was confirmed to activate the pMCK and p50-2 reporters, but to repress the IL-6 promoter. However, although in these cells p53 Val135 had the expected wt-like phenotype with respect to activation of the p50-2 reporter at 32.5 degrees C (32.5 degrees C > 37 degrees C), this mutant had little effect on expression from pMCK at either temperature, and activated rather than repressed the IL-6 promoter at 32.5 degrees C. In HeLa cells, although wt p53 activated p50-2 but repressed the MCK and IL-6 promoters, p53 Val135 activated all three reporters. Unexpectedly, in these cells the upregulation of p50-2 and pIC225 was basically temperature-independent, and that of pMCK was inversely ts (37 degrees C > 32.5 degrees C). The novel ts properties of p53 Val135 show that this mutant is not always wt-like at 32.5 degrees C but exhibits strong cell-type and promoter-dependent differences in its ts phenotype for transcriptional modulation.