Mdm2 ligase dead mutants did not act in a dominant negative manner to re-activate p53, but promoted tumor cell growth.

Mdm2 (murine double minute 2) is an oncogene, first identified in BALB/c 3T3 cells. Over-expression and gene amplification of Mdm2 were found in a variety of human cancers. Recently, Mdm2 was found to be an E3 ubiquitin ligase that promotes degradation of p53, which contributes significantly to its oncogenic activity. In this study, we test a hypothesis that Mdm2 ligase dead mutants, which retained p53 binding activity but lost degradation activity, would act in a dominant negative manner to re-activate p53, especially upon stressed conditions. Five Mdm2 constructs expressing wild-type and E3 ligase-dead Mdm2 proteins were generated in a Tet-Off system and transfected into MCF-7 breast cancer cells (p53+/+ with Mdm2 overexpression) as well as MCF10A immortalized breast cells (p53+/+ without Mdm2 overexpression) as a normal control. We found that expression of Mdm2 mutants were tightly regulated by doxycycline. Withdrawal of doxycycline in culture medium triggered overexpression of Mdm2 mutants. However, expression of ligase dead mutants in MCF7 and MCF10A cells did not reactivate p53 as shown by a luciferase-reporter transcription assay and Western blot of p53 and its downstream target p21 under either unstressed condition or after exposure to DNA damaging agents. Biologically, over-expression of Mdm2 mutants had no effect on p53-induced apoptosis following DNA damage. Interestingly, over-expression of Mdm2 mutants promoted growth of MCF7 tumor cells probably via a p53-independent mechanism. Over-expression of Mdm2 mutants, however, had no effect on the growth of normal MCF10A cells and did not cause their transformation. Thus, ligase dead mutants of Mdm2 did not act in a dominant negative manner to reactivate p53 and they are not oncogenes in MCF10A cells.