The causes of spontaneous chromosomal translocations in somatic cells of biological organisms are largely unknown, although double-strand DNA breaks are required in all proposed mechanisms. The most common chromosomal abnormality in human cancer is the reciprocal translocation between chromosomes 14 and 18 (t(14;18)), which occurs in follicular lymphomas. The break at the immunoglobulin heavy-chain locus on chromosome 14 is an interruption of the normal V(D)J recombination process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFibroblast growth factor 8 isoform b (FGF8b), a mitogenic and transforming polypeptide, was demonstrated to be naturally up-regulated in prostatic premalignant and malignant lesions in men. We generated four independent lines of transgenic mice with targeted overexpression of FGF8b in the prostatic epithelium using an improved rat probasin promoter, ARR(2)PB. Transgene expression in the prostate tissue was readily demonstrated by reverse transcription-PCR and localized to the prostatic epithelium by in situ hybridization.
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