Tetra- and pentanucleotide short tandem repeat instability in gastric cancer

The association between genetic instability in repetitive DNA domains and cancer has been reported in different types of malignancies. In this work we perform a comparative study of 29 gastric tumors with paired normal tissue using seven tetra-(FES/FPS, VWA31/A, HTPO, TH01, MBPB) and pentanucleotide (CD4, TP53) STR polymorphic markers regarding loss of heterozygosity and replication error status. Furthermore, we compare the gene frequencies obtained in normal tissue from patients with those of a normal control population from the same area, looking for allele associations between any of these polymorphic loci and gastric cancer risk. The results have shown that FES/FPS and TP53 present the higher rates of somatic instability. The observed results for TP53 are in accordance with those previously reported in gastric carcinogenesis, while instability of FES/FPS is for the first time reported in this tumor type. Our data suggest that different loci show different rates of instability and/or loss of heterozygosity and do not seem to consist of a result of an RER+ phenotype affecting several genomic repetitive domains. Furthermore, the instability in markers TH01, MBPB, TP53, and FES was generally detected in genotypes involving alleles with a high number of repeats. Comparing gene frequencies in patients and normal controls, no significant differences were found, although longer alleles are consistently more frequent in patients for the markers MBPB, TH01, and CD4.