graphic
View largeDownload slide

8q24 is a gene desert associated with increased risk for prostate and other types of cancer. Ting et al. investigated how this region confers risk by studying its function at the molecular level. This group previously showed that 8q24 contains several regions with enhancer activity in vitro. Here, they characterise one enhancer region, called AcP10, containing a risk-associated SNP, in vivo. Transgenic mice expressing AcP10 show activation of a reporter gene in a subset of Nkx3.1-expressing lumenal epithelial cells in the prostate that have stem-like properties and are thought to be crucial for tumorigenesis. Page 366

Written by editorial staff. © 2012. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
2012
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly cited and all further distributions of the work or adaptation are subject to the same Creative Commons License terms