Definition
The word Ras comes from a contraction of Rat sarcoma, the tumor where the first gene of the family was identified, as part of the genome of a retrovirus isolated from a carcinogenesis protocol.
Characteristics
Structure
The Ras genes are prototypical members of the Ras superfamily of small GTPases that perform a host of important cellular functions including signal transduction (Ras, Ral, Rho), cytoskeletal regulation (Rho), vesicle transport (Rab), and nuclear-cytoplasmic transport (Ran). There are at least three Ras genes that are relevant for human cancer: H-, K-, and N-ras. H-Ras was initially isolated from the Harvey sarcoma virus, K-Ras from the Kirsten sarcoma virus, and N-Ras was isolated by DNA-mediated gene transfer from a human neuroblastoma cell line. In humans they are located in chromosome 11p15, H-Ras; 12p12, K-Ras; and 1p22, N-Ras. These three genes code for very similar proteins of 189 amino acids with four coding exons. Although the proteins are very...
References
Bourne H, Sanders DA, McCormick F (1990) The GTPase superfamily: conserved structure and molecular mechanism. Nature 349:117–127
Fernández-Medarde A, Santos E (2011) Ras in cancer and developmental diseases. Genes Cancer 2:344–358
Malumbres M, Barbacid M (2003) RAS oncogenes: the first 30 years. Nat Rev Cancer 3:459–465
Malumbres M, Pellicer A (1998) Ras pathways to cell cycle control and cell transformation. Front Biosci 3:d887–d912
Schubbert S, Shannon K, Bollag G (2007) Hyperactive Ras in developmental disorders and cancer. Nat Rev Cancer 7:295–308
See Also
(2012) AKT. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 115. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_163
(2012) EGF. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 1211. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_1824
(2012) EGFR. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 1211. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_1828
(2012) Farnesylated. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 1379. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_2119
(2012) Farnesyltransferase. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 1379. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_2120
(2012) GEF. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 1516. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_2353
(2012) Leukemia. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 2005. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_3322
(2012) Palmitoylated. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 2762. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_4353
(2012) Rab. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 3133. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_4890
(2012) Raf. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 3161. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_4934
(2012) Ral. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 3163. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_4940
(2012) Ran. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 3164. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_4943
(2012) Retrovirus. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, pp 3296–3297. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_5084
(2012) Rho. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 3302. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_5099
(2012) Senescence. In: Schwab M (ed) Encyclopedia of cancer, 3rd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, p 3370. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-16483-5_5236
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Wong, Y.H., Pellicer, A., Liu, W. (2015). RAS Genes. In: Schwab, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cancer. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27841-9_4951-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27841-9_4951-2
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