The Many Faces of WAS Protein

For many years, immunologists have puzzled over how a single gene mutation can cause the diverse symptoms of Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, a rare hereditary disease characterized by symptoms ranging from a severely compromised immune system to bleeding and cancer. Recent studies of WASp, protein produced by the gene at fault in WAS, are helping to solve that mystery, and at the same time are pointing to some intriguing new connections between the cell's internal communication pathways.