Pan-cancer analysis of telomere maintenance mechanisms.

ABSTRACT: Telomeres, protective caps at chromosome ends, maintain genomic stability and control cell lifespan. Dysregulated telomere maintenance mechanisms (TMMs) are cancer hallmarks, enabling unchecked cell proliferation. We conducted a pan-cancer evaluation of TMM using RNA sequencing data from The Cancer Genome Atlas for 33 different cancer types and analyzed the activities of telomerase-dependent (TEL) and alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) TMM pathways in detail. To further characterize the TMM profiles, we categorized the tumors based on their ALT and TEL TMM pathway activities into five major phenotypes: ALT ^high TEL ^low, ALT ^low TEL ^low, ALT ^middle TEL ^middle, ALT ^high TEL ^high, and ALT ^low<

SUBMITTER: Hakobyan M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11225560 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature