Our long term goal is to understand structure/function relationships among the elk-1 proteins. The elk-1 protein is a transcriptional activator which regulates c-fos, oncogene activity. We have recently identified at least two alternative spliced products of the elk-1 gene namely elk-1 and Delta elk-1. Both of which are potential substrates for extracellular signal regulated kinases implicating a key role for these kinases in the transcription regulation of elk-1 proteins by external stimuli. We have recently identified the various functional domains of the elk-1 protein like DNA binding, protein-protein interaction and Negative regulation of DNA binding. We plan to identify the transcriptional activation domains, and study the effect of phosphorylation by external stimuli on the DNA binding, protein-protein interaction and transcriptional activations of these proteins. We plan to identify the promoter elements of the elk-1 gene, study the oncogenic potential as well as identify other proteins that might interact with elk-1 and Delta elk-1 proteins.
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