Cancer’s Dangerous Renovations to Our Chromosomes Revealed
Cancer remodels the architecture of our chromosomes so the disease can take hold and spread, University of Virginia researchers have revealed.
This remodeling is important because the arrangement of the components in our chromosomes actually affects the workings of our genes. With these renovations, cancer begins making a comfortable home for itself inside our cells.
“Even when the genetic code in DNA sequence may largely remain the same, the three-dimensional structure of chromosomes in cancer can be very different from our normal cells,” said researcher Chongzhi Zang, a computational biologist with UVA’s Center for Public Health Genomics. “A better understanding of the cancer genome structure can give us insights for developing new drugs to specifically target the Achilles’ heel of each cancer.”
Findings Published
The researchers have published their findings in the scientific journal Genome Biology. The UVA research team consisted of Zhenjia Wang, Aakrosh Ratan and Zang. The experimental work was done in collaboration with scientists at Northwestern University, University of Miami and Mayo Clinic.
Full UVA Today Article here.
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