New insight into cancer aneuploidy in zebrafish

Abstract

Aneuploidy is one of the most common genetic alterations in cancer cell genomes. It greatly contributes to the heterogeneity of cancer cell genomes, and its roles in tumorigenesis are attracting more and more attentions. Zebrafish is emerging as a new genetic model for many human diseases including cancer. The zebrafish cancer model has shown an equivalent degree of aneuploidy as found in corresponding human cancers, thus it provides a great tool for us to study cancer aneuploidy and, in general, cancer biology. Here, we discuss some new advances of aneuploidy and the potential usages of this cancer model system.

Keywords: Aneuploidy; Cancer drivers; Cancer passengers; Comparative oncogenomics; Oncogene addiction; Oncogenes; Phylooncogenomics; Synthetic lethality; Tumor suppressor genes; Zebrafish.