Different combinations of biallelic APC mutation confer different growth advantages in colorectal tumours

New facets to Knudson's [corrected] "two-hit" hypothesis have been proposed recently in relation to adenomatous polyposis coli (APC): protein inactivation may be selected weakly, and the two hits may be interdependent. We reviewed published data on 165 sporadic and 102 familial adenomatous polyposis-associated colorectal tumors with two characterized mutations. Using a Poisson model, we redefined the mutation cluster region (MCR) to residues 1281-1556 and confirmed that the locations of pairs of APC mutations are interdependent (P < 0.0001). A mathematical model, based on the data for sporadic tumors, implied different growth advantages for different combinations of APC mutations: genotype I/I (I: mutation inside MCR) was 3.9 times more likely to be selected than IO or IL (O: mutation outside MCR, L: allelic loss), which were 27.8 times more likely to be selected than OO or OL.