Background information
Epitope tags are useful for the labeling and detection of proteins usingimmunoblotting, immunoprecipitation and immunostaining techniques. Due to their small size, they are unlikely to affect the tagged protein's biochemical properties. The Myc epitope tag is widely used to detect expression of recombinant proteins in bacteria, yeast,insect and mammalian cell systems.The c-Myc protein is a transcription factor, which is encoded by the c-Myc gene on human chromosome 8q24. c-Myc is commonly activated in a variety of tumor cells and plays an important role in cellular proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis and cell cycle progression. The phosphorylation of c-Myc has been investigated and previous studies have suggested a functional association between phosphorylation at Thr58/Ser62 by glycogen synthase kinase 3, cyclin dependent kinase, ERK2 and C-Jun N terminal Kinase (JNK) in cell proliferation and cell cycle regulation. Studies also have shown that c-Myc is essential for tumor cell development in vasculogenesis and angiogenesis that distribute blood throughout the cells, and which brought extensive attention in the development of new therapeutic approach for cancer treatment.
