The molecular mechanism of Tcl1 mediated oncogenesis was not known untill ten years ago when we and others reported that Tcl1 functions as an activator PI3K - Akt(PKB) oncogenic pathway [33, 34]. Akt kinase encoded by the AKT oncogene plays an important role in the regulation of a number of signaling pathways involved in cell proliferation, survival, and death in numerous cell types including B- and T-cells [35]. Our results showed that Tcl1 and Akt physically interact and that PH domain of Akt is responsible for this binding [33]. Using in vitro and in vivo kinase assays we showed that Akt bound to Tcl1 exhibits significant increase in the kinase activity [33, 34]. We also demonstrated that Tcl1 mediates the nuclear translocation of Akt [33].
