Vol. 25, No. 3, 2003 (September)
	Content

RETROTRANSPOSABLE ACTIVATION OF ALU ELEMENTS, GENOMIC INSTABILITY AND CARCINOGENESIS

Rui-Bao Tang¹, Yang Yuan², Kang Ying², Hou-Qi Liu¹, Kai-Meng Hu¹

¹Department of Histology and Embryology, the Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
²State key laboratory of Genetic Engineering, School of Life Science, Institute of Genetics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China

Abstract. Alu elements are the most abundant short interspersed repetitive elements (SINEs). Providing insertion mutations or hot spots for unequal homologous recombination (HR), Alus contribute to varieties of genomic diseases. With probes sharing significant similarity with Alus, we performed in situ hybridization to analyze paraffin sections of hepatoma and found that abundance of Alu RNA was notably higher in hepatoma than in adjacent tissues. Based on observations of others laboratories, we speculate that retrotransposable activation of Alu elements might cause genomic instability during carcinogenesis.

Key Words: Alu elements, carcinogenesis, genomic instability, retrotransposable activation.

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