Characterizing Adenocarcinomas

An advanced online paper from Nature characterizes copy number alterations in the lung adenocarcinoma genome. Researchers led by Eric Lander and Matthew Meyerson analyzed 371 primary lung tumors using dense SNP arrays to find 57 recurrent events. Of the 39 autosomal chromosome arms, 26 consistently had large-scale copy number gains or losses. The scientists also found 31 recurrent focal events, six of which are associated with known mutations. The most common event was an amplification of chromosome 14q13.3 which contains NK2 homeobox 1, a lineage-specific transcription factor.