News
This is not a phosphatase
Apr 02, 2025
Phosphorylation serves as a key on-and-off switch in cell signaling, such as in the Akt pathway, which regulates cell growth and is often upregulated in cancer. Master students Tarik Husremović and Vanessa Meier from the Leonard lab now reveal, in a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), that the phosphatases PHLPP1 and PHLPP2 – previously believed to dephosphorylate Akt and suppress tumor growth – are neither phosphatases nor tumor suppressors. Although catalytically dead, the authors found that PHLPP is actually descended from an ancient phosphatase. These findings suggest that PHLPP plays a non-catalytic role within an old but conserved biological process.