Parental Origin of the Gene Mutations in Families with Low Penetrance Hereditary Retinoblastoma.

Our aim was to identify alterations causing hereditary low penetrance retinoblastoma and to evaluate how the parental origin of an mutation affects its phenotypic expression. By NGS and MLPA, mutations were found in 191 from 332 unrelated retinoblastoma patients. Among patients with identified mutations but without clinical family history of retinoblastoma, 7% (12/175) were found to have hereditary disease with one of the parents being an asymptomatic carrier of an mutation.

Methylation of the BIN1 gene promoter CpG island associated with breast and prostate cancer.

Background: Loss of BIN1 tumor suppressor expression is abundant in human cancer and its frequency exceeds that of genetic alterations, suggesting the role of epigenetic regulators (DNA methylation). BIN1 re-expression in the DU145 prostate cancer cell line after 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine treatment was recently reported but no methylation of the BIN1 promoter CpG island was found in DU145.

Methods: Methylation-sensitive arbitrarily-primed PCR was used to detect genomic loci abnormally methylated in breast cancer.