EIGHT genes have been found that may play a role in a particularly deadly form of leukaemia. The discovery comes thanks to a rise in the speed of whole-genome sequencing, and a drop in its cost. An avalanche of genes responsible for other diseases may follow.
Until now, researchers looking for cancer genes have adopted a 鈥渦sual suspects鈥� approach 鈥� guessing at likely candidates and sequencing them to see if they differ in tumours and normal tissue. This has not worked well for acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), but a team led by at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, has cast the net wider.
Using a recently developed sequencing method, they looked at the entire genome of cells from an AML tumour and from the patient鈥檚 skin. This revealed 10 genes that differed between the tissues. Two were known to be involved in leukaemia, but the other eight had not been suspected (Nature, ).
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Three of the eight are tumour-suppressors and the others have functions that could link them to cancer, but it鈥檚 not proven that the new genes help cause leukaemia.
