3. A. A patient with leukemia comes to see you to talk about their plan for trea

Question

3. A. A patient with leukemia comes to see you to talk about their plan for treatment. You decide to sequence common cancer-related genes in their cancer cells to get a better idea of how to treat the cancer. You decide to sequence p53, BCR, ABL and PI3K. You don't seem to find any mutations in these genes. So you decide to look at epigenetic modifications on histones tails where the DNA for these genes is located. You find that the histones at the p53 gene has modifications at H3K9me3 and H3K27me3. What does this nomenclature mean and what effect do each of these modifications have on gene expression? B. List a gene that could have mutations that result in these epigenetic modifications in these cancer cells. Also, explain how this mutation would lead to this observed methvlation at p53 in cancer cells..

Explanation / Answer

H3K9me3 and H3K27me3 are the two histone marks that are known for their roles in repression in the genic and non-genic regions of genomes. Modifications or alterations of these H3K9me3 and H3K27me3 play a critical role in carcinogenesis. These modifications of H3K9me3 and H3K27me3 lead to epigenetic silencing of the human p53 tumor suppressor gene in cancer cells. Thus carcinogenesis is related to changes in p53 gene that occur due to modifications in H3K9me3 and H3K27me3.

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