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This article takes a closer look at the role of oncogenes in cancer, along with how they differ from tumor suppressor genes and DNA repair genes. It also provides examples of oncogenes and the cancers they can cause.
Oncogenes are mutated genes that may cause cancer. Understanding how oncogenes work is helping medical researchers create more effective cancer treatments.
The main types of genes that play a role in cancer are oncogenes, tumor suppressor genes, and DNA repair genes. Learn more here.
Most oncogenes began as proto-oncogenes: normal genes involved in cell growth and proliferation or inhibition of apoptosis. If, through mutation, normal genes promoting cellular growth are up-regulated (gain-of-function mutation), they predispose the cell to cancer and are termed oncogenes.
What drives cancer cells to grow and divide uncontrollably turning into cancer? Studies of proto-oncogenes reveal some clues about how normal cellular processes mutate and go awry.
They are important cell regulatory genes, in many cases encoding proteins that function in the signal transduction pathways controlling normal cell proliferation (e.g., src, ras, and raf). The oncogenes are abnormally expressed or mutated forms of the corresponding proto-oncogenes.
Proto-oncogenes make proteins for bodily functions. If mutations occur, they become oncogenes, which cause rapid cell growth and cancer. Learn more.