The central nervous system restricted transcription factor Olig2 opposes p53 responses to genotoxic damage in neural progenitors and malignant glioma

Summary High-grade gliomas are notoriously insensitive to radiation and genotoxicdrugs. Paradoxically, the p53 gene is structurally intact in the majority of these tumors. Resistance to genotoxicmodalities in p53-positive gliomas is generally attributed to attenuation of p53 functions by mutations of other components within the p53 signaling axis, such as p14 Arf , MDM2, and ATM , but this explanation is not entirely satisfactory. We show here that the central nervous system (CNS)-restricted transcription factor Olig2affects a key posttranslational modificationof p53 in both normal and malignant neural progenitors and thereby antagonizes the interaction of p53 with promoter elements of multiple target genes. In the absence of Olig2function, even attenuated levels of p53 are adequate for biological responses to genotoxicdamage.