Human MST2 Xpress Clones

MST2 is a serine/threonine kinase originally identified from a HeLa cell (Creasy and Chernoff, 1995) and Jurkat (Taylor et al., 1996) cDNA libraries. Yeast "sterile 20" (Ste20) kinase is MST2's homolog and acts upstream of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade that is activated under a variety of stress conditions. In mammalian cells, MST2 activated by the proapoptotic agents straurosporine and FAS ligand (Taylor et al., 1996; Lee et al., 2001). Gene knock out experiments indicated that MST2 activation is associated with apoptosis (O'Neil et al., 2004). MST2, and it's homolog in Drosophila (hippo, Hpo kinase), is a part of the Hippo kinase cascade that was recently shown to promote cell proliferation and inhibits apoptosis (Zhao et al., 2008; Dong et al., 2007, Harvey et al., 2003).

MST2 protein contains 491-amino acid and can phosphorylate myelin basic protein (MBP), histone H1, and itself. The catalytic domain of MST2 is at the N-terminus of the protein. Lysine residue 56 is a catalytically essential residue, and hence, mutating it to arginine abolishes the kinase activity of MST2. Therefore, the K56R-expressing vector can be used as a dominant negative to inhibit Hippo pathway in mammalian cells.

Gene Name: Homo sapiens Serine/Threonine Kinase 3 (STK3); AKA: MST-2, mammalian serine/threonine kinase 3 (STK3); STE20-like kinase MST2; mammalian STE20-like protein kinase 2; serine/threonine-protein kinase Krs-1.