Funded by The Kay Yow Cancer Fund
Long Interspersed Element-1 (L1) retrotransposon is the driving force of all transposon-induced mutagenesis in the human genome. L1-induced mutagenesis has taken a center stage after new L1 insertions have been identified in cancer-promoting genes, suggesting that L1 mutations may be driving human cancers. This study is focused on lung cancer because many lung malignancies are deficient in a cellular pathway shown to suppress L1-induced damage in cultured cells. This funding allowed us to develop a reliable pipeline for Next Generation Sequencing analysis of L1 expression. The funding also provided the opportunity to further our understanding of the impact of L1-induced damage in lung cancer in vivo.
