Question

During the summer of your second year in medical school, you had an opportunity to work in a cancer research lab, analyzing gene expression in biopsied samples from patients. You were given data from microarray comparing cancer versus normal tissues. Unfortunately, by this time you have forgotten all the oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes you learned in Dr. Lin’s class. Plus, you would like to make discovery of your own anyway.

Based on microarray data, what would you classify as potential oncogenes, and what would be tumor suppressor genes?

What experiments will you design to test the potential oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes?

What technique will you use if you suspect the abnormal gene activity is due to chromosomal translocation?