Disease relevance of Plk2

• Moreover, selective targeting of plk1 or chk1 in tumor xenografts of mice by oncolytic adenovirus mutants demonstrated potent anti-tumoral efficacy in the presence of low dose cisplatin [1].

High impact information on Plk2

• Furthermore, we have demonstrated that the apoptosis due to silencing of Snk/Plk2 in the face of spindle damage occurs in mitotic cells and not in cells that have progressed to a G(1)-like state without dividing [2].
• Plk2 (Snk) is a polo-like kinase expressed at G(1) in cultured cells and mainly in the hippocampal neurons in the brains of adult rodents, but its function is poorly understood [3].
• This new putative kinase, which we term Snk, for serum-inducible kinase, showed similarity in its proposed catalytic domain to many other protein kinases; however, no other kinase showed enough sequence similarity with Snk to suggest the existence of a common function [4].
• Both plasma FFA and glycerol decreased in KK/Snk and increased by the treatment of human ANGPTL3 [5].
• KK/Snk had significantly lower plasma triglyceride and free fatty acid (FFA) than KK mice [5].

Biological context of Plk2

• As a result of Plk1 depletion cell proliferation decreased to 17% [6].
• In contrast, exposure to Dox led to marked downregulation of Plk1 mRNA to 3% and Plk1 protein to 14% in cell culture compared to mismatch shRNA/Plk1-expressing cells [6].
• Comparison of sorted 2N/4N and polyploid MK indicated that PLK-1 expression was absent in polyploid MK, while expression of other cell cycle proteins was similar in both populations [7].
• This prompted us to test the effects of combined targeting of chk1 and a critical regulator of mitosis, polo-like kinase 1 (plk1) [1].

Anatomical context of Plk2

• Endogenous Snk was detected in early G(1) in NIH 3T3 cells, and nascent Snk showed a half-life of about 15 min [8].
• A GFP-C-Snk fusion protein showed polo-box-dependent localization to the microtubule organizing center, and ectopic expression of Snk in COS-7 cells induced changes in cell morphology, depending on Snk kinase activity and the polo-box [8].

Associations of Plk2 with chemical compounds

• Substitution of Thr-236 with a glutamate residue increased Snk kinase activity by about 10-fold, whereas substitution of Lys-108 abolished its kinase activity [8].
• After administration of Dox knockdown of Plk1 expression was observed correlating to a significant inhibition of tumor growth [6].
• For this purpose inducible RNAi vectors containing tetracycline (Tet)-responsive derivatives of the H1 promoter for the conditional expression of short hairpin RNA (shRNA) were used to target human polo-like kinase 1 (Plk1), which is overexpressed in a broad spectrum of human tumors [6].
• Influence of chk1 and plk1 silencing on radiation- or cisplatin-induced cytotoxicity in human malignant cells [1].

Analytical, diagnostic and therapeutic context of Plk2

• The gene encoding mouse polo-like kinase 1 (PLK-1) was introduced into MK by retroviral transduction, and its effects measured by flow cytometry [7].

References