We show that 20% of the melanoma primaries contained missense mutations in the SAP30-interacting domain and PHD finger motif of the ING1 gene with the R102L and N260S alterations observed more than once.
To further investigate whether ING1 is involved in melanoma development, we examined the mutational status of the ING1 gene in 46 human cutaneous melanoma biopsies and characterized the biological importance of ING1 mutations in nucleotide excision repair.
Taken together, these observations strongly suggest that p33(ING1) cooperates with p53 in UVB-induced apoptosis via the mitochondrial cell death pathway in melanoma cells.