The well-accepted notion that gene amplification contributes to increased expression still remains, after all these years, a reasonable but unproven assumption

Yuping Jia; Lichan Chen; Qingwen Jia; Xixi Dou; Ningzhi Xu; Dezhong Joshua Liao

doi:10.4103/1477-3163.182809

The well-accepted notion that gene amplification contributes to increased expression still remains, after all these years, a reasonable but unproven assumption

J Carcinog. 2016 May 20:15:3. doi: 10.4103/1477-3163.182809. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Yuping Jia¹, Lichan Chen², Qingwen Jia¹, Xixi Dou¹, Ningzhi Xu³, Dezhong Joshua Liao⁴

Affiliations

¹ Animal Facilities, Shandong Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ji'nan, Shandong 250101, USA.
² Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, Austin, MN 55912, USA.
³ Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology, Cancer Institute, Chinese Academy of Medical Science, Beijing 100021, China.
⁴ Department of Pathology, Guizhou Medical University Hospital, Guizhou, Guiyang 550004, P.R. China.

Abstract

"Gene amplification causes overexpression" is a longstanding and well-accepted concept in cancer genetics. However, raking the whole literature, we find only statistical analyses showing a positive correlation between gene copy number and expression level, but do not find convincing experimental corroboration for this notion, for most of the amplified oncogenes in cancers. Since an association does not need to be an actual causal relation, in our opinion, this widespread notion still remains a reasonable but unproven assumption awaiting experimental verification.

Keywords: Cancer; gene amplification; overexpression; translocation.

Publication types

Review