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Nature Genetics 40, 685–686 (1 June 2008) | doi:10.1038/ng0608-685

Molecular screening for new fusion genes in cancer

Sverre Heim & Felix Mitelman

On page 722 of this issue, Peter Campbell and colleagues present a technically sophisticated study in which they use genome-wide massively parallel paired-end sequencing to identify somatically acquired rearrangements in cancer. Comparing the germline as well as tumor cell line genomes from two individuals with lung cancer to the reference human genome, they characterized more than 300 germline structural variants and 103 somatic rearrangements to a base-pair level of resolution.