Genes other than BRCA1 and BRCA2 involved in breast cancer susceptibility
 

This is strictly for those that are interested in the "technical".

It is very complex and technical, but for me a the lay level;

1. Reinforces how complex this all is.
2. Gives an idea as to how risk and disease might be assessed in the future
3. Stresses the diffculties researchers face in trying to find magic bullets that are widely applicable.

I have also seen the chicken and egg issue raised in the genetic expression issue - essentially bred or born - the question is to what extent are gentetic changes/ expression level witness the extent of environmental influences and to what extent are the purely inherited.

RB

http://jmg.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/39/4/225

This was an interesting description of a cancer

http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cg.../63/24/8939#B2

"Cancer has been described as a progression of genetic mutations in an aberrant tissue mass, and many oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes have been identified (1) . The notion that tumor progression after the genetic events that initiate malignancy critically involve interactions between the malignant cells and the normal cells in the tumor environment has come to the fore more recently (2 , 3) . It is now accepted that stromal cells as well as cells from distant locations actively contribute to tumor growth, invasion, and metastasis (4, 5, 6) . Epithelial cells use a wide variety of factors to sense and to respond to their environment. These include cell adhesion molecules, such as intergrins (7) , cadherins and the associated catenins (8) , and growth factors, such as fibroblast growth factor (9) , and transforming growth factors {alpha} and ß (10) ."