MCT-1 enhances translation

MCT-1 is an oncogene initially identified in a human T-cell lymphoma. Subsequently, MCT-1 protein levels were found to be elevated in a subset of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Forced expression of MCT-1 has recently been shown to induce cell proliferation as well as activate survival-related pathways protecting lymphoid cells from apoptosis. We document here that MCT-1 interacts with the density-regulated protein (DENR/DRP), containing the SUI1 translation initiation domain, found in many translation initiation factors. MCT-1 contains the PUA domain, a recently described RNA binding domain that is found in several tRNA and rRNA modification enzymes. Our findings established that MCT-1 protein is interacting with the cap complex through its PUA domain and enhances translation. Furtheremore, our data support a putative role for the MCT-1 oncogene in translation and suggests a mechanism for its role in lymphomagenesis. Keywords: Gene upregulation by MCT-1 The aim is to determine which genes are being actively translated when MCT-1 protein is overexpressed. In order to achieve that, we used the polysome associated mRNAs from 293HEK cells expressing MCT-1 or empty vector as control. These mRNAs were then analyzed on a Human apoptosis and cell cycle gene array.