Our previous studies have established that the p53 populations that accumulate in normal human cells exposed to etoposide or infected by an E1B 55-kDa protein-null mutant of human adenovirus type 5 carry a large number of posttranslational modifications at numerous residues (C. J. DeHart, J. S. Chahal, S. J. Flint, and D. H. Perlman, Mol Cell Proteomics 13:1-17, 2014, http: //dx.doi.org/10.1074/mcp.M113.030254). In the absence of this E1B protein, the p53 transcriptional program is not induced, and it has been reported that the viral E4 Orf3 protein inactivates p53 (C. Soria, F. E. Estermann, K. C. Espantman, and C. C. O'Shea, Nature 466:1076 -1081, 2010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09307). As the latter protein disrupts nuclear Pml bodies, sites at which p53 is modified, we used mass spectrometry to catalogue the posttranscriptional modifications of the p53 population that accumulates when neither the E1B 55-kDa nor the E4 Orf3 protein is made in infected cells. Eighty-five residues carrying 163 modifications were identified. The overall patterns of posttranslational modification of this population and p53 present in cells infected by an E1B 55-kDa-null mutant were similar. The efficiencies with which the two forms of p53 bound to a consensus DNA recognition sequence could not be distinguished and were lower than that of transcriptionally active p53. The absence of the E4 Orf3 protein increased expression of several p53-responsive genes when the E1B protein was also absent from infected cells. However, expression of these genes did not attain the levels observed when p53 was activated in response to etoposide treatment and remained lower than those measured in mock-infected cells. T he cellular p53 protein was discovered by virtue of its interaction with the major product of the simian virus 40 oncogene, large T antigen (1, 2). The p53 tumor suppressor is a master regulator of cellular responses to internal and external stresses, when it can induce inhibition of cell cycle progression, apoptosis, or other responses, such as changes in metabolism. Under normal conditions, the human p53 protein is maintained at low concentrations, for example, as a result of its targeting for proteasomal degradation by the E3 ubiquitin ligase Hdm2 (3-5). Once stabilized and activated in response to genotoxic and other forms of stress, p53 binds to specific promoter sequences to activate or repress the transcription of numerous target genes (6-10) and can also operate in the cytoplasm to induce apoptosis by transcription-independent mechanisms (reviewed in references 11 to 14).One of the first interactions between human adenovirus type 5 (Ad5) and cellular proteins to be identified was the association of the viral E1B 55-kDa protein with p53 (15). In view of its crucial roles in regulating cell survival and other aspects of cellular physiology, considerable effort has since been devoted to elucidation of the impacts of adenoviral gene products on the activities and properties of p53. The viral immediate-early E1A prote...