New Technologies Reveal New Melanoma Genes

The ability to decode the human genome through sequencing has provided new insights into all diseases, cancer in particular. On the assumption that the driving influences on melanoma biology result from changes in the coding region (i.e., segments of the genome that yield proteins), investigators performed whole-exome sequencing to assess all acquired (i.e., somatic) mutations in the DNA of 14 matched normal tissue and metastatic tumor specimens. By definition, these mutations occur in tumor but not in matched normal tissue (e.g., blood) from the same patient.

To identify new oncogenes, the researchers looked for recurrence. In well-known oncogenes, such as BRAF and NRAS, repeat mutations of certain amino acids occur; these changes most effe…