A survey of a single human gene family has revealed more than 150 new mutations that can help trigger cancer, according to a study led by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute that appears today (March 7) in Nature. The team sequenced all known protein kinase genes in 210 cancer samples, yielding a total of 1,000 mutations, then used statistical analyses to identify 158 cancer-promoting mutations in 119 genes, most of which had never before linked to cancer, said last author Mike Stratton, leader of the Sanger Institute's Cancer Genome Project, during a conference call with reporters this week. The cancer research community has identified a total of about 350 cancer genes, not including the genes discovered in this study, he said.The results far exceeded the authors' predictions, Andrew Futreal, a senior author of the paper and a researcher at the Cancer Genome Project, said during the call....
popular areaSingle Nucleotide PolymorphismneutralThe ScientistThe ScientistarticleCancer Genome Atlasmail@the-scientist.comNaturehttp://www.nature.com/nature/index.html http://www.sanger.ac.uk/The Scientisthttp://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15457/'http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/SNP/The Scientisthttp://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/38329/Naturehttp://www.nature.com/nature/index.htmlhttp://cancergenome.nih.gov
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