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Updated: May 20, 2026
Isolation and Characterization of a Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma Subpopulation Having Stem Cell Characteristics
Published on: May 11, 2016
Target genes of microsatellite sequences in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: mononucleotide repeats are not
Yimin Wang1, Xuejuan Liu, Yulin Li
1Department of Pathology, Jilin University, The key laboratory of Pathobiology, Ministry of Education, 126 Xinmin Street, Changchun, Jilin 130021, PR China.
Abstract:
Microsatellite instability (MSI) is detected in a wide variety of tumors. It is thought that mismatch repair gene mutation or inactivation is the major cause of MSI. Microsatellite sequences are predominantly distributed in intergenic or intronic DNA. However, MSI is found in the exonic sequences of some genes, causing their inactivation. In this report, we searched GenBank for candidate genes containing potential MSI sequences in exonic regions. Twenty seven target genes were selected for MSI analysis. Instability was found in 70% of these genes (14/20) with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Interestingly, no instability was detected in mononucleotide repeats in genes or in intergenic sequences. We conclude that instability of mononucleotide repeats is a rare event in HNSCC. High MSI phenotype in young HNSCC patients is limited to noncoding regions only. MSI percentage in HNSCC tumor is closely related to the repeat type, repeat location and patient's age.
