0000000000614331
AUTHOR
Juliane Mooz
Dimerization of the kinase ARAF promotes MAPK pathway activation and cell migration.
The RAF family of kinases mediates RAS signaling, and RAF inhibitors can be effective for treating tumors with BRAF V600E mutant protein. However, RAF inhibitors paradoxically accelerate metastasis in RAS -mutant tumors and become ineffective in BRAF V600E tumors because of reactivation of downstream mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling. We found that the RAF isoform ARAF has an obligatory role in promoting MAPK activity and cell migration in a cell type–dependent manner. Knocking down ARAF prevented the activation of MAPK kinase 1 (MEK1) and extracellular signal–regulated kinase 1 and 2 (ERK1/2) and decreased the number of protrusions from tumor cell spheroids in three-dimensi…
Science Signaling Podcast: 5 August 2014
This Podcast features an interview with Juliane Mooz and Krishnaraj Rajalingam, authors of a Research Article that appears in the 5 August 2014 issue of Science Signaling , about the cellular functions of the kinase ARAF. RAF proteins are serine-threonine kinases that mediate signaling through the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway, and aberrant RAF activity can transform normal cells into cancerous cells. There are three RAFs in mammals: ARAF, BRAF, and CRAF. The most studied of these is BRAF, mutations in which are associated with various cancers. Whereas the cellular functions of BRAF and CRAF have been extensively studied, not much is known about ARAF. Mooz et al . found th…