The glutathione S-transferase supergene family: regulation of GST and the contribution of the isoenzymes to cancer chemoprotection and drug resistance.

TLDR: The biochemical functions of GST are described to show how individual isoenzymes contribute to resistance to carcinogens, antitumor drugs, environmental pollutants, and products of oxidative stress, and to allow identification of factors that may modulate resistance to specific noxious chemicals.

Abstract: The glutathione S-transferases (GST) represent a major group of detoxification enzymes. All eukaryotic species possess multiple cytosolic and membrane-bound GST isoenzymes, each of which displays distinct catalytic as well as noncatalytic binding properties: the cytosolic enzymes are encoded by at least five distantly related gene families (designated class alpha, mu, pi, sigma, and theta GST), whereas the membrane-bound enzymes, microsomal GST and leukotriene C, synthetase, are encoded by single genes and both have arisen separately from the soluble GST. Evidence suggests that the level of expression of GST is a crucial factor in determining the sensitivity of cells to a broad spectrum of toxic chemicals. In this article the biochemical functions of GST are described to show how individual isoenzymes contribute to resistance to carcinogens, antitumor drugs, environmental pollutants, and products of oxidative stress.A description of the mechanisms of transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulat...