A proteasome is a type of protein complex found in cells that acts like a recycling center. It helps break down and dispose of unwanted or damaged proteins in the cell.
The use of proteasome inhibitors to treat cancer has been greatly limited by the ability of cancer cells to develop resistance to these drugs. (sciencedaily.com)
«We think this may be a fitness tradeoff mechanism in tumors that enables these cells to proliferate in normal conditions a bit more slowly, but when they encounter a concentration of proteasome inhibitors that would be toxic to the rest of the cancer cells, these cells are able to survive,» says Tsvetkov, who is also a lead author of the eLife paper. (sciencedaily.com)
A scan for human - specific relaxation of negative selection reveals unexpected polymorphism in proteasome genes Somel, M., M. A. W. Sayres, G. Jordan, E. Huerta - Sanchez et al. 2013. (nielsenlab.org)