Opto-p53: A light-controllable activation of p53 signaling pathway

p53 protein, a crucial transcription factor in cellular responses to a wide variety of stress, regulates multiple target genes involved in tumor suppression, senescence induction, and metabolic functions. To characterize the context-dependent roles of p53, it is still needed to develop an experimental system that enables selective activation of p53 in cells and tissues. In this study, we developed an optogenetic tool, Opto-p53, to control p53 signaling by light. Opto-p53 was designed to trigger p53 signaling by reconstituting p53 N-terminal and C-terminal fragments with a light-inducible dimerization (LID) system. Upon light exposure, cells expressing Opto-p53 demonstrated p53 transcriptional activation, resulting in cell death and cell cycle arrest. We further enhanced the efficacy of light-induced p53 activation by introducing specific mutations into Opto-p53 fragments. Our findings unveil the capability of Opto-p53 to serve as a powerful tool for dissecting the complex roles of p53 in cellular processes, thereby contributing to the field of synthetic biology and providing general design principles for optogenetic tools using endogenous transcription factors.Key words: synthetic biology, transcriptional factor, p53, optogenetics.