Faculty Advisor

Saucedo, Leslie

Area of Study

Science and Mathematics

Publication Date

Summer 2013

Abstract

Phosphatase of Regenerating Liver 3 (PRL-3), a human protein in the Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase (PTP) gene family, has been highly correlated with cancer’s ability to metastasis in numerous types of cancer. Until recently, this was thought to be the primary function of PRL-3 within mammalian cancer cells, but Basak et al., (2008) found that PRL-3 could have function in inhibiting cellular growth, a contradicting cellular response. Further research was done by Pagarigan et al., (2013) using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) as a model. Their findings echoed these claims and showed that specific structural portions of dPRL-1, fruit flies’ only version of PRL, were necessary for its anti-growth activity. In this study we will investigate a portion of PRL known as the WPD loop which is a commonly necessary component of most PTP proteins and has been implicated as a proton donor in catalytic reactions. To determine whether the WPD loop is necessary, human PRL-3 will be inserted into fruit flies. We hypothesize that either the fruit flies will now exhibit a oncogenic phenotype, indicating the WPD loop differences are significant, or it won’t have an oncogenic phenotype meaning the differences are not significant.

Publisher

University of Puget Sound

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