1. evolgen
  2. The Cancer Genome

The Cancer Genome

By evolgen on October 17, 2006.

Science has published THE genome of breast and colorectal cancers. Not the whole genome, mind you, but just 13,023 protein coding genes. The researchers identified mutations associated with cancers, but I'm not sure if they looked outside of the protein coding sequences (I have yet to read the paper, and I'm not sure when I'll get around to it). Nobel Intent has a review of the paper.

When I first heard about this project I wondered what exactly they'd be doing. The fact that this study only looked at 11 cancers for each tissue is somewhat surprising. What I'd really like to see is a study that can tie together DNA sequence changes (protein coding, non-translated transcribed sequences, and cis-regulatory regions), gene expression profiles, and chromosomal aberrations. Without all three, I think you're missing out on major aspects of cancer genetics.

I think Orac needs to chime in on this one.

Tags
biology
genomics
Molecular Biology

More like this

Could the Cervical Cancer Vaccine Gardasil also Protect against Breast Cancer?

This is the first of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease. by Matthew Fitzgerald

The "war on cancer": We're doing better than commonly portrayed

If you were to rely on much of what you see in the mainstream media and on social media, you probably have the impression that we are not doing very well against cancer. Indeed, a common trope I see in a lot of articles is that we are somehow "losing" the war on cancer.

HPV-It's not just a 'female' thing

HPV (Human Papillomavirus) is widely known as the virus that causes cervical cancer in w

Cancer 101

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., and at any moment directly affects almost 4% of the population, or about 10.8 million Americans.