Using ribosome profiling to investigate the effect of p53 on translation in cancer cells

p53 is deleted or dysfunctional, or develops these features during the course of disease, with a frequency of about 50% in human cancers. This is clinically important because this group of patients respond very poorly to treatment. Our approach to discovering novel biomarkers or targets for therapy for p53 deleted/dysfunctional disease is to find genes that are translationally regulated by p53. The aim of this experiment is to compare translational efficiencies in cancer cells that are p53 WT, p53-/-, or p53 R175H, in response to doxorubicin.