The evidence is growing: an increasing number of studies are implicating proteins involved in chromatin modification -- changes in the structure of chromosomes -- in numerous types of cancer.
"Suddenly, in the last six months, all this new data from cancers show the involvement of [mutated] chromatin enzymes," said linkurl:Bin Teh,;http://www.vai.org/research/labs/cancergenetics.aspx director of the laboratory of cancer genetics at the Van Andel Research Institute in Michigan. "I think a lot of people did not suspect chromatin enzymes were involved."In early cancer genomics research in the 1980s and 1990s, scientists used family studies and linkage analyses to identify numerous tumor suppressor genes, such as p53, RB1, ATM, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2, that were often mutated in cancerous cells. Now, thanks to next generation technology enabling the rapid sequencing of an exome -- all the protein-coding regions in a genome -- scientists have expanded their search for cancer-causing genes, systematically exploring tumor...
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Lymphoma:
Childhood brain tumors:MLL2MLL3,The ScientistMelanoma:Renal cancer:Nature,Pancreatic cancer:
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linkurl:Wikimedia Commons, Reytan;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CompT1.jpg |
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