Collaboration to Study Mechanisms of Cancer Development

A team of researchers from the Mayo Clinic has announced preliminary data that demonstrates the advantages of sequencing-based  approaches for associating structural variants with RNA expression profiles, to identify potential biomarkers in head and neck cancer.

The data is the result of an ongoing scientific collaboration formed in 2008 between the Mayo Clinic and Applied Biosystems, a division of Life Technologies Corporation. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic are using digital gene expression capabilities of the SOLiD™ System to associate genetic variation at the transcript level with structural variants.

A key to understanding structural variation is the ability to visualise chromosomal rearrangements, and other changes to large segments of DNA such as copy number variations, inversions, translocations, insertions, and deletions. Sequencing-based RNA expression analysis enabled the researchers to establish directionality of expressed transcripts, which is significant because DNA is transcribed in two different directions. Establishing directionality of expressed transcripts allows researchers to more easily determine which RNA transcripts are coding and non-coding. Non-coding RNAs play an increasingly important role in regulating biological processes involved in cancer differentiation and development.