The (r)evolution of cancer genetics

Abstract

The identification of an increasing number of cancer genes is opening up unexpected scenarios in cancer genetics. When analyzed for their systemic properties, these genes show a general fragility towards perturbation. A recent paper published in BMC Biology shows how the founder domains of known cancer genes emerged at two macroevolutionary transitions - the advent of the first cell and the transition to metazoan multicellularity. See research article http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/66.

Figure 1

Heterogeneity of genes mutated in different cancer types. So far, more than 1,000 human genes have been identified that carry proven or potential driver mutations involved in cancer progression. Of those, only 85 genes have been found mutated in at least two studies, either in large-scale screenings or in the cancer gene census, which is a literature-based collection of known cancer genes [20]. The latter can be genetically repressive (red) or dominant (orange), which broadly correspond to tumor-suppressors and caretakers and to oncogenes, respectively. This distinction cannot be done for genes identified through large-scale screenings that involve either massive exon [2-6] or whole-genome [7-13] resequencing.