DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1)-deficient mice are tumor-prone, and this has been proposed to result from the induction of genomic instability. To address whether loss of DNMT1, or the related protein DNMT3b, results in genomic instability in human cancer cells, we used a near-diploid human colorectal cancer cell line, HCT116, in which one or both DNMT genes were disrupted by homologous recombi...

Seckel syndrome (SCKL) is a rare, genetically heterogeneous disorder, with dysmorphic facial appearance, growth retardation, microcephaly, mental retardation, variable chromosomal instability, and hematological disorders. To date, three loci have been linked to this syndrome, and recently, the gene encoding ataxia-telangiectasia and Rad3-related protein (ATR) was identified as the gene mutated ...

Constitutional aneuploidy is typically caused by a single-event meiotic or early mitotic error. In contrast, somatic aneuploidy, found mainly in neoplastic tissue, is attributed to continuous chromosomal instability. More debated as a cause of aneuploidy is aneuploidy itself; that is, whether aneuploidy per se causes chromosomal instability, for example, in patients with inborn aneuploidy. We h...

Chromosomal instability is believed to be a common feature of most human tumors, but the stage at which such instability originates has not been defined. At the molecular level, chromosomal instability is characterized by allelic imbalance (AI), representing losses or gains of defined chromosomal regions. We have assessed AI in early colorectal tumors using newly developed methods for assessing...

PURPOSE Despite advances in therapy, >50% of patients with Ewing sarcoma will relapse. The current prognostic factors are not optimal for risk prediction. Studies have shown that telomere length could predict outcome in different malignancies. Our aim was to evaluate whether telomere length could be a better prognostic factor in Ewing sarcoma and correlate the results with clinical variables, o...

Neuroblastoma (NB) is a childhood cancer of the autonomic nervous system. The molecular pathology of NB is not yet well understood. Both amplification of the proto-oncogene N-myc and loss of heterozygosity of several chromosomal loci occur in NB, representing genetic instability. In this study, we examined another type of genetic instability, microsatellite instability. Five chromosomal loci kn...

Chromosomal instability enables tumor development, enabled in part by aberrant expression of the mitotic checkpoint protein Mad2. Here we identify a novel regulatory mechanism for Mad2 expression involving miR-28-5p-mediated inhibition of Mad2 translation, and we demonstrate that this mechanism is triggered by inactivation of the tumor suppressor VHL, the most common event in clear cell renal c...

Mutations involved in many cancers have been identified, but with some cancers requiring six or more mutations to take on their fully metastatic forms, the question remains whether all of these mutations can be acquired via a process of successive mutation, at a normal rate, and clonal expansion or whether heightened mutation rates are required. This issue has been debated for decades. Recently...

Ataxia telangiectasia is a neurodegenerative inherited disease with chromosomal instability and hypersensitivity to ionizing radiation. iPS cells lacking ATM (AT-iPS cells) exhibited hypersensitivity to X-ray irradiation, one of the characteristics of the disease. While parental ataxia telangiectasia cells exhibited significant chromosomal abnormalities, AT-iPS cells did not show any chromosoma...