Disease relevance of Mus81

• Despite these defects, Mus81(-/-) mice do not show increased predisposition to lymphoma or any other malignancy in the first year of life [1].
• When grown in culture, Mus81(-/-) cells have elevated levels of DNA damage, acquire chromosomal aberrations, and are hypersensitive to agents that generate DNA cross-links [1].

High impact information on Mus81

• Taken together, these findings suggest a role for Mus81 in resolving Holliday junctions that arise when DNA replication is blocked by damage or by nucleotide depletion [2].
• Disruption of murine Mus81 increases genomic instability and DNA damage sensitivity but does not promote tumorigenesis [1].
• Surprisingly, embryonic fibroblasts from Mus81(-/-) animals fail to proliferate in vitro [1].
• Involvement of mammalian Mus81 in genome integrity and tumor suppression [3].
• Mus81-/- mice are viable and fertile, which indicates that mammalian Mus81 is not essential for recombination processes associated with meiosis [3].

Other interactions of Mus81

• We show that loss of even a single allele of Mus81 drastically modifies the tumor spectrum of p53-mutant mice and increases their predisposition to developing sarcomas [4].

Analytical, diagnostic and therapeutic context of Mus81

• We have used gene targeting to study the function of the Mus81-Eme1 endonuclease in mammalian cells [1].

References