Journal article
BCL-2 family member BOK is widely expressed but its loss has only minimal impact in mice
F Ke, A Voss, JB Kerr, LA O'Reilly, L Tai, N Echeverry, P Bouillet, A Strasser, T Kaufmann
Cell Death and Differentiation | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2012
DOI: 10.1038/cdd.2011.210
Abstract
BOK/MTD was discovered as a protein that binds to the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family member MCL-1 and shares extensive amino-acid sequence similarity to BAX and BAK, which are essential for the effector phase of apoptosis. Therefore, and on the basis of its reported expression pattern, BOK is thought to function in a BAX/BAK-like pro-apoptotic manner in female reproductive tissues. In order to determine the function of BOK, we examined its expression in diverse tissues and investigated the consequences of its loss in Bok -/- mice. We confirmed that Bok mRNA is prominently expressed in the ovaries and uterus, but also observed that it is present at readily detectable levels in several other tiss..
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Awarded by National Institutes of Health
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Drs JM Adams, S Cory, DCS Huang, D Gray, M Herold and G Kelly for mice, reagents and advice; K Vella, G Siciliano, D Cooper, N Iannarella and J Coughlin for animal care; J Corbin for automated blood analysis; B Helbert and C Young for genotyping; E Tsui for histological preparations; Dr. F Battye and his team for cell sorting; D Quilici, T Nikolaou and G Thomas for irradiation and D Bachmann for expert technical assistance. This work was supported by grants and fellowships from the Leukemia Research Foundation (to FK), the National Health and Medical Research Council (Program Grant no. 461221, NHMRC Australia Fellowship), the NIH (CA43540), the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (SCOR grant no. 7413), the Swiss National Science Foundation (to TK, PP0033_119203) and operational infrastructure grants through the Australian Government IRISS and the Victorian State Government OIS.