Fig. 3.

p53 functionality and variation in tissue specificity. Variation in tissue specificity in relation to p53 functional status versus all, or versus the apoptotic REs. p53 mutant alleles were divided into two groups (PD and SD) and the distribution (%) of tumors in the seven most frequent tissue targets is shown (solid columns). For each tissue, estimates of tumor frequencies that are adjusted for family membership are also presented (hatched columns). These estimates give equal weight to each family. The family-based estimates can be larger or smaller than the individual-based estimates (first two columns). Statistical significance is provided only for comparisons of family-based estimates because those tests properly account for possible correlations between family members. Considering all p53 REs and family-based estimates, partial functionality is associated with higher incidence of breast cancer (*, P = 0.05) and with lower incidence of connective (*, P = 0.0006) and bone (*, P = 0.07) tumors (within-cluster resampling; ref. 24). These differences were confirmed considering apoptotic REs for connective (*, P = 0.05) and bone (*, P = 0.05) tumors but not for breast cancer (P = 0.27). A nonsignificant tendency for higher incidence of bronchus/lung tumors with partial functionality, observed with all REs (P = 0.18), approached statistical significance when apoptotic REs were considered (P = 0.08). Adrenal, brain, and hematopoietic tumors showed little evidence of differences across functional classes (minimum, P = 0.13).