Drivers and passengers

摘要

Studies that have provided the first unbiased, large-scale analyses of DNA mutations across an array of cancers also have lessons for the proposal to annotate the entire cancer genome. Cancer results from an accumulation of mutations and other heritable changes in susceptible cells. So far, abnormalities in about 350 genes have been implicated in human cancers, but the true number of cancer genes' is unknown. On page 153 of this issue, Greenman and colleagues build on their previous analyses of breast, lung and brain tumours by identifying mutations in the genes encoding all known protein kinases — enzymes that regulate other proteins through the addition of a phosphate residue — across various types of cancer.