Survivin (also known as BIRC5) is one of the first reported inhibitors of apoptosis proteins (IAPs), which is an important family of proteins that regulate apoptosis. It is developmentally regulated and expressed during cell differentiation in humans, mice and rat. Survivin is expressed in a series of human cancers and it has been widely accepted that survivin is strongly related to the onset and development of cancer. In the present study, we tried to determine differences in the promoter region of survivin gene in colon tissue samples from N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU) induced rat colon tumor model and control group. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) - single strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis was used for this aim. No significant differences were found in the promoter region of survivin gene between the normal and tumor tissues (Tab. 2, Fig. 1, Ref. 16).