NF-κB Activation: The IκB Kinase Revealed?

More than a decade ago, the transcriptional activator NF-κB was described as a protein that bound to a specific DNA site in the intronic enhancer of the immunoglobulin κ light chain gene (Sen and Baltimore 1986). Following the cloning of genes encoding the p50 and p65 subunits of NF-κB, it became evident that both subunits are members of the larger NF-κB/Rel family of transcriptional regulator proteins. Since its initial description, our view of the role of NF-κB in immune and inflammatory responses has broadened significantly (for reviews, see 1, 2).