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Nature 433, 591-592 (10 February 2005) | doi:10.1038/433591a; Published online 9 February 2005

Cancer:  Catalyst of a catalyst

Stephen C. Kowalczykowski1

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Breast cancers arise when the BRCA2 protein is defective, but what does the normal enzyme do? Studies of a relative of BRCA2 reveal a capacity to initiate the repair of broken DNA by loading a repair protein.

The identification of the human BRCA2 gene was a landmark discovery in the field of breast cancer1. Mutations in this gene result in a dramatically increased predisposition to breast cancer, as well as to other tumour types.

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