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. 1993 Jun;12(6):2389–2396. doi: 10.1002/j.1460-2075.1993.tb05893.x

p53-catalyzed annealing of complementary single-stranded nucleic acids.

P Oberosler 1, P Hloch 1, U Ramsperger 1, H Stahl 1
PMCID: PMC413469  PMID: 7685274

Abstract

p53 has been reported to inhibit the DNA helicase intrinsic to simian virus 40 large tumor antigen (T antigen). We found that inhibition is not restricted to T antigen, but also affects several other DNA and RNA helicases. Complexing of the helicases by the p53 protein as a possible inactivation mechanism could be excluded. Instead, the anti-helicase activity can be explained by our finding that p53 binds with high affinity to single-stranded nucleic acids and has a strong DNA.DNA and RNA.RNA annealing activity. We could also show that p53 is able to alter the secondary structure of RNA and/or to influence dynamic RNA-RNA interactions. These results, and the fact that the affinity of p53 to RNA is about one order of magnitude higher than to single-stranded DNA, imply an RNA-specific function of p53 in vivo.

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