e to DNA damage. Previous studies have indicated that p53 is another important substrate of RSK2 for chromatin remodeling and regulation of gene expression. RSK2 activates and phosphorylates p53 in vitro and in vivo and colocalizes with p53 in the nucleus. Upon UVB stimulation, phosphorylation of p53 at Ser15 in cells from CLS patients lacking RSK2 was noticeably reduced compared to p53 phosphorylation in healthy cells, showing a crucial role for RSK2 in p53 activation in response to DNA damage. As p53 is a common target for both Atm and RSK2 in the presence of DNA lesions, this suggests the existence of a DNA damage pathway that involves both RSK2 and Atm. In addition, our analysis also showed that RSK2 interacts with Atm shortly after the induction of DNA damage, while Atm activation is greatly diminished when RSK2 is absent or mutated. Quantification of cH2AX foci revealed that DNA repair ability is reduced in Atm-defective human fibroblasts treated with Neocarzinostatin, a radiomimetic reagent that induces DSBs. This observation correlates well with our observation that RSK2 KO MEFs and CLS fibroblasts exhibit a significantly higher number of cH2AX foci per cell with longer periods of AD treatment, indicating deficiencies in DNA repair in RSK2-deficient cells. These findings demonstrate that both RSK2- and Atm-deficient cells display similar functional defects, presumably meditated by their common downstream target p53. Thus our study suggests that RSK2 plays an important role in the Atm/p53-dependent DNA damage pathway and DNA repair. RSK2 does not SB203580 custom synthesis contain a classic nuclear localization signal, and the mechanism by which it translocates to the nucleus has not been investigated previously. In response to mitogen treatment, RSK2 is slowly released from stress granules and shuttles rapidly in and out of the nucleus. Atm is predominantly present within the nucleus of cultured human cells, with a small fraction present in the cytoplasm. Several studies have suggested that the phosphorylation status of RSK is important for its nuclear translocation. Other studies have also indicated that various binding partners regulate the subcellular distribution of RSK. Here, we found that cytosolic RSK2 translocates to the nucleus when DNA damage occurs. As Atm is predominantly expressed in the nucleus, transport of RSK2 to the nucleus enables the formation of a RSK2-Atm complex and activates the Atm/p53-dependent DNA damage pathway in response to DNA damage. Atm, Atr, and DNA-PKs are DNA damage-sensing protein kinases that signal the presence of DNA lesions, initiate cell cycle 
arrest, and DNA repair or apoptosis through a series of phosphorylation events. Impaired DNA damage response would promote apoptosis. We also observed that RSK2 KO cells exhibited decreased cell viability and elevated cell death under genotoxic stress compared to RSK2 WT cells. However, we did not observe 11741201 alternations of Bax expression in both RSK2 WT and KO cells. The expression of Bax is regulated by p53 and will be elevated under apoptotic signals. We postulated that in our experiments, the Adriamycin treatment in immortalized MEF cells was able to induce p53 signaling to cell cycle arrest but not severe enough to induce massive apoptosis. Therefore we found that p21 but not Bax was up-regulated during genotoxic stress. In summary, our study has uncovered 14707029 a novel role for RSK2 in a DNA damage and repair pathway that maintains genomic stability by regulating cell cycle pro