But a linguist precipitated on this parade by noting that -- given the uncertainties about why Homo sapiens even has language (is it merely a talent conferred by a random genetic mutation that hit our species 150,000 years ago?), there's no guarantee that the extraterrestrials will be blessed with the gift of gab.
Under this new approach, researchers expect that treatment will be tailored to an individual tumor's mutations, with drugs, eventually, that hit several key aberrant genes at once.
The main hypothesis in the field currently proposes that disease onset in ADPKD is triggered by somatic "second hit" mutations that inactivate the functional copy of the PKD gene followed by colonal expansion of the affected cells [ 35].
No pathogenic mutation that specifically hits one isoform of NF2 has been described; tumorigenic mutations always inactivate both isoforms [ 34, 35].
We investigated the nuclear mutational profile of oncocytic tumors to pinpoint the mutations that may trigger the early oncogenic hit.
Another point against a classical tumor suppressor model is the fact that only a minority of tumors with POLE or POLD1 EDMs show LOH or other inactivating mutations that could act as 'second hits'.
This drug is a powerful agent that can hit cancer cells with mutations that make them resistant to Gleevec, the life-saving leukemia drug from Novartis.
Mutations that add or change function?
Somewhere among the genetic disparities must lie the mutation or, more probably, mutations that define us.
