Abstract
Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have unraveled a large number of cancer risk alleles. Understanding how these allelic variants predispose to disease is a major bottleneck confronting translational application. In this issue, Li and colleagues combine GWASs with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to disambiguate the contributions of germline and somatic variants to tumorigenic gene expression programs. They find that close to half of the known risk alleles for estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer are expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) acting upon major determinants of gene expression in tumors.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 387-389 |
Number of pages | 3 |
Journal | Cell |
Volume | 152 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 31 2013 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology