Monteiro Alvaro N A
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY 10021, USA.
Trends Genet. 2003 Jun;19(6):312-5. doi: 10.1016/S0168-9525(03)00110-0.
Recent evidence indicates that BRCA1, a gene product associated with breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility, is an important component of the cellular response to DNA damage. Despite being expressed ubiquitously in adult tissues, germline mutations in BRCA1 predispose individuals to breast and ovarian tumors with only minor effects on the predisposition to cancer in other sites. The reason for this tissue specificity of BRCA1 carcinomas must be found if we are to understand fully why these tumors occur and to enable us to design efficient preventive and therapeutic regimens. Here I propose that tissue-specific rates of loss of heterozygosity in the BRCA1 locus could contribute to tissue specificity in tumor development.
最近的证据表明，BRCA1（一种与乳腺癌和卵巢癌易感性相关的基因产物）是细胞对DNA损伤反应的重要组成部分。尽管BRCA1在成年组织中普遍表达，但BRCA1的种系突变使个体易患乳腺癌和卵巢癌，而对其他部位癌症的易感性影响较小。如果我们要全面理解这些肿瘤为何发生，并使我们能够设计出有效的预防和治疗方案，就必须找到BRCA1癌这种组织特异性的原因。在此，我提出BRCA1基因座杂合性缺失的组织特异性速率可能有助于肿瘤发展中的组织特异性。
