BACKGROUND Colorectal cancer is the third most common type of cancer in men and women and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and UK. Colorectal cancer is strongly related to age, with almost three-quarters of cases occurring in people aged 65 or over. Pre-symptomatic screening is one of the most powerful tools for preventing colorectal cancer. Recently, the u...

Thyroid cancer is a very common form of endocrine system malignancy. To date, the molecular mechanism underlying thyroid cancer remains poorly understood. Studies of oncocytic tumors have led to a hypothesis which proposes that defects in oxidative phosphorylation (OX- PHOS) may result in a compensatory increase in mitochondrial replication and gene expression. As a result, mitochondrial DNA (m...

In the May 15, 2007 issue of Cancer Research , Bai et al. (1) claimed that individuals carrying haplogroup K mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages are at significantly increased risk of developing breast cancer, whereas those bearing haplogroup U lineages have a significantly decreased risk. However, this study has a number of drawbacks. First, haplogroup K is phylogenetically nested within haplog...

PURPOSE To examine the mtDNA control regions in normal and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) retinas. To identify the mtDNA variations associated with AMD. METHODS Retinas from 10 normal and 11 AMD globes were isolated and analyzed for mtDNA rearrangements by long extension-polymerase chain reaction (LX-PCR) and for the nature and frequency of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in th...

PURPOSE To screen mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) for nucleotide variations in primary congenital glaucoma (PCG). METHODS The entire coding region of the mitochondrial genome was amplified by polymerase chain reaction from 35 PCG patients and 40 controls. The full mtDNA genome except the D-loop was sequenced. All sequences were analyzed against mitochondrial reference sequence NC_012920. RESULTS ...