Protein made by breast cancer gene purified
23. 08. 2010 | ecancer.org
A key step in understanding the origins of familial breast cancer has been made by two teams of scientists at the University of California, Davis. The researchers have purified, for the first time, the protein produced by the breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2 and used it to study the oncogene's role in DNA repair.
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The results published online Aug. 22 in the journals Nature, and Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. They open new possibilities for understanding, diagnosing and perhaps treating breast cancer.
BRCA2 is known to be involved in repairing damaged DNA, but exactly how it works with other molecules to repair DNA has been unclear, said Stephen Kowalczykowski, distinguished professor of microbiology in the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, UC Davis Cancer Center member and senior author of the Nature paper. "Having the purified protein makes possible far more detailed studies of how it works," Kowalczykowski said.
Read the whole article at ecancer.org
Reference
- Jensen RB, Carreira A, Kowalczykowski SC. Purified human BRCA2 stimulates RAD51-mediated recombination. Nature 2010; 467(7316): 678–683. doi: 10.1038/nature09399.
- Liu J, Doty T, Gibson B, Heyer WD. Human BRCA2 protein promotes RAD51 filament formation on RPA-covered single-stranded DNA. Nature Structural and Molecular Biology 2010; 17(10): 1260–1262. doi: 10.1038/nsmb.1904.
Keywords: BRCA2, familial breast cancer, DNA repair mechanism
