英语科普小知识 基因表达错误会增加患癌风险.docVIP

More than 80 genetic spelling mistakes that can increase the risk of breast, prostate and ovarian cancer have been found in a large, international research study within the framework of the EU network COGS. For the first time, the researchers also have a relatively clear picture of the total number of genetic alterations that can be linked to these cancers. Ultimately the researchers hope to be able to calculate the individual risk of cancer, to better understand how these cancers develop and to be able to generate new treatments. The main findings are published in five articles in a special issue on genetic risk factors for cancer in the scientific journal Nature Genetics. The articles originate from COGS (Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study), an EU-based consortium where more than 160 research groups from all over the world are included. In the five COGS studies 100,000 patients with breast, ovarian or prostate cancer and 100,000 healthy individuals from the general population were included. ? The scientists performed genetic analyses on all study participants. The composition of the nitrogen bases A, G, C and T was studied on 200,000 selected sections of the DNA strand. When cancer patients had significantly different compositions compared to healthy control subjects, the differences were considered to be relevant to risk of disease. The alterations can be described as a genetic spelling mistake, where A, G, C or T have been replaced with another letter. This spelling mistake is called Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) -- pronounced snip. ? For breast cancer the researchers found 49 genetic typos or SNPs, which is more than double the number previously found. In the case of prostate cancer, researchers have discovered another 26?deviations（差异，偏差）, which means that a total number of 78 SNPs may be linked to the disease. For ovarian cancer 8 new relevant SNPs were found. ? An equally important finding is that we identified how many additional SNP