Mutations in regulatory regions promoting tumors too?

Until now, sequencing studies have identified many recurrent mutations within the protein-coding regions of human cancer genes but very few mutations involving the regulatory, or non-coding, regions of those genes. Two new studies in this week’s issue of Science Express, however, demonstrate that about 71 percent of human melanomas harbor one of two somatic mutations in the TERT gene, which encodes a subunit of telomerase, the enzyme that caps the ends of chromosomes.