Making sense of the noise

摘要

Possibly the most famous cancer gene is called BRCA1, for breast cancer 1. It is expressed in breast tissue and encodes a protein that fixes double-stranded breaks in DNA. When such breaks cannot be repaired, the same protein triggers cell suicide, protecting the cell from replicating the mutated DNA. Mutations in BRCA1 that prevent its expression or cripple the protein raise the risk of developing breast cancer. A woman with a faulty BRCA1 gene has a 65% chance of developing breast cancer by the age of 70 (ref. 1).