Human cells have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes but in cancer, genes can be amplified in chromosomes or in circular extrachromosomal DNA, whose frequency and functional significance are not understood. Now researchers at the University of California, San Diego, report that ecDNA is a common event in human cancer, occurring at minimum in 14% of human tumors, with higher frequencies in the most malignant forms of cancer, including glioblastoma, sarcoma, esophageal, ovarian, lung, bladder, head and neck, gastric, and many others.
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