9 research outputs found

    Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

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    Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

    Foodborne pathogens and host predilection

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    During food manufacturing, the potential exists for contamination of products with pathogenic microorganisms. While the ingestion of a bacterial pathogen will typically result in illness in a susceptible host, it is not the case for each strain within a given species. Pathogenic bacteria display various levels of host specificity: some infect a wide range of hosts, while others have strict host selectivity and are obligate pathogens. Host specificity of bacterial pathogens is determined by multiple molecular interactions between both the pathogens and their hosts. Understanding these interactions in detail will allow risk-based decisions to be made on affected foods, informed by knowledge of specific strains or pathotypes. This has the potential to avoid costly and unnecessary recalls with classical pathogens that can be proved to have a low potential for causing illness
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