Classical oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes: A comparative genomics perspective

We have curated a reference set of cancer-related genes and reanalyzed thei r sequences in the light of molecular information and resources that have b ecome available since they were first cloned, Homology studies were carried out for human oncogenes and tumor suppressors, compared with the complete proteome of the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, and partial proteomes of mouse and rat and the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Our results demon strate that simple, semi-automated bioinformatics approaches to identifying putative functionally equivalent gene products in different organisms may often be misleading. An electronic supplement to this article(1) provides a n Integrated view of our comparative genomics analysis as well as mapping d ata, physical cDNA resources and links to published literature and reviews, thus creating a "window" into the genomes of humans and other organisms fo r cancer biology.