Nonrandom variations in human cancer ESTs indicate that mRNA heterogeneity increases during carcinogenesis.

ABSTRACT: Virtually all cancer biological attributes are heterogeneous. Because of this, it is currently difficult to reconcile results of cancer transcriptome and proteome experiments. It is also established that cancer somatic mutations arise at rates higher than suspected, but yet are insufficient to explain all cancer cell heterogeneity. We have analyzed sequence variations of 17 abundantly expressed genes in a large set of human ESTs originating from either normal or cancer samples. We show that cancer ESTs have greater variations than normal ESTs for >70% of the tested genes. These variations cannot be explained by known and putative SNPs. Furthermore, cancer EST variations were not random, but were determined by the composition of the substituted base (b0) as well as that of the bases located

SUBMITTER: Brulliard M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1855071 | biostudies-literature | 2007 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature