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Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules pp 1–10Cite as

Ral

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Synonyms

RAS-like protein

Historical Background

Ral proteins, RalA and RalB, are members of the Ras family of small GTPases. Ral proteins are activated by guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) that catalyze the exchange of GDP for GTP and facilitate the binding of Ral to its various downstream effector proteins. GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs) stimulate the hydrolysis of GTP to GDP, which inactivates Ral.

The discovery that many tumors contained a transforming Ras allele (HRAS, KRAS and NRAS) in the 1980s spurred interest in identifying new members of the Ras family. In 1986, Pierre Chardin and Armand Tavitian synthesized a 20-mer oligonucleotide probe corresponding to a conserved region of Ras proteins to identify novel Ras genes by screening a simian B-cell line cDNA library (Chardin and Tavitian 1986). The screen resulted in the discovery of an open reading frame that shared a high degree of homology with the three Ras genes and was consequently named Ral (Ras-like). The...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Sarah R. Pollock & David F. Kashatus

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  1. Sarah R. Pollock
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  2. David F. Kashatus
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Correspondence to David F. Kashatus .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Biological Science, Department of Molecular Science and Tech College of Natural Science, Suwon, Korea (Republic of)

    Sangdun Choi

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Pollock, S.R., Kashatus, D.F. (2016). Ral. In: Choi, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6438-9_101835-1

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