Somatic Mutations of ErbB4

Somatic mutations and proteins

A large body of data has now been accumulated concerning the ways in which heritable mutations can affect protein structure. Such mutations are usually presumed to arise in the germ line, and are studied by progeny analyses of various types. Today, I would like to consider how somatic mutations might be genetically predisposed and thereby made available to an organism during its adaptation to e...

Erbb4 Mutations in Cancer and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

ErbB receptor tyrosine kinases, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR, also known as ErbB1), ErbB2 (HER2 or NEU), ErbB3 (HER3), and ErbB4 (HER4), transduce signals borne by extracellular ligands into central cellular responses such as proliferation, survival, differentiation, and apoptosis. Mutations in ERBB genes are frequently detected in human malignant diseases of epithelial and neural ori...

[Haldane's rule and somatic mutations].

Haldane's rule stating that viability and fertility in the heterogametic sex of hybrids are lower than in the homogametic sex is explained on the basis of the assumption that diploidy is aimed at protecting individuals having large body size and large genomes from somatic mutations. The presence of hemizygous sex chromosomes, which are effectively haploid in the heterogametic sex, results in th...

Somatic mutations in cancer development

The transformation of a normal cell into a cancer cell takes place through a sequence of a small number of discrete genetic events, somatic mutations: thus, cancer can be regarded properly as a genetic disease of somatic cells. The analogy between evolution of organisms and evolution of cell populations is compelling: in both cases what drives change is mutation, but it is Darwinian selection t...

Olaparib and somatic BRCA mutations