The discovery, from the lab of Brian Strahl, PhD, offers
insights for the creation of better, more targeted therapies for various forms
of cancer.
Twelve years ago, UNC School of Medicine researcher Brian
Strahl, PhD, found that a protein called Set2 plays a role in how yeast genes
are expressed – specifically how DNA gets transcribed into messenger RNA. Now
his lab has found that Set2 is also a major player in DNA repair, a complicated
and crucial process that can lead to the development of cancer cells if the
repair goes wrong.
“We found that if Set2 is mutated, DNA repair does not
properly occur” said Strahl, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics. “One
consequence could be that if you have broken DNA, then loss of this enzyme
could lead to downstream mutations from inefficient repair. We believe this
finding helps explain why the human version of Set2 – which is called SETD2 –
is frequently mutated in cancer.”