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Yale scientists identify cancer-suppressing gene in mice
Remove just one gene in a cell and it can cause rapid, uncontrollable cell division — cancer. Animal immune systems have developed their own kind of police force to keep tumors in check. But what if a single gene, when deleted, could have the ability to stop even the most competent of immune systems from killing cancerous cells?
According to a recent study by researchers at the Yale Systems Biology Institute, the gene exists, and it has a name: Prkar1a.
Located on the bottom half of chromosome 11 in mice, Prkar1a codes for a protein that aids in the cell signal pathway. But when the team injected cells without the gene under the skin of mice, those cells rapidly grew into tumors that were able to evade normal immune responses. A gene like this is not new in itself — plenty of other genes are linked to cancer, such as Csnk1a1, Nf2 and Zbtb40 — but there’s more than meets the microscope with Prkar1a.
Source: Yale Daily News