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The Use of Mouse Mammary Tumor Cells in an In Vitro Invasion Assay as a Measure of Oncogenic Cell Behavior
Published on: June 12, 2019
Involvement of mammalian Mus81 in genome integrity and tumor suppression
John Peter McPherson1, Bénédicte Lemmers, Richard Chahwan
1Ontario Cancer Institute, 620 University Avenue, Suite 706, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 2C1.
Abstract:
Mus81-Eme1 endonuclease has been implicated in the rescue of stalled replication forks and the resolution of meiotic recombination intermediates in yeast. We used gene targeting to study the physiological requirements of Mus81 in mammals. Mus81-/- mice are viable and fertile, which indicates that mammalian Mus81 is not essential for recombination processes associated with meiosis. Mus81-deficient mice and cells were hypersensitive to the DNA cross-linking agent mitomycin C but not to gamma-irradiation. Remarkably, both homozygous Mus81-/- and heterozygous Mus81+/- mice exhibited a similar susceptibility to spontaneous chromosomal damage and a profound and equivalent predisposition to lymphomas and other cancers. These studies demonstrate a critical role for the proper biallelic expression of the mammalian Mus81 in the maintenance of genomic integrity and tumor suppression.
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