An international group led by RIKEN in Japan and INSERM in France have found that retroviral long-terminal-repeat (LTR) promoters—a type of repetitive element that are widely distributed in the human genome—are highly activated in hepatocellular carcinomas, the most common type of liver cancer. Intriguingly, these areas—which are particularly activated in HCCs associated with viral hepatitis, are not normally activated in the liver but are in reproductive tissues such as testis and placenta. The study, published in Genome Research, suggests that the activation of LTR promoters might contribute to the development of cancer in the liver.
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