Sequence Mutations of Genes Pertaining to Malignancy in Cancer

Cancer is a complex disease where various types of molecular aberrations drive the development and progression of malignancies. Among the diverse molecular aberrations, inherited and somatic mutations on DNA sequences are considered as major drivers for oncogenesis. The complexity of somatic alterations is revealed from large-scale investigations of cancer genomes and robust methods for interring the function of genes. In this review, we will describe sequence mutations of several cancer-related genes and discuss their functional implications in cancer. In addition, we will introduce the on-line resources for accessing and analyzing sequence mutations in cancer. We will also provide an overview of the statistical and computational approaches and future prospects to conduct comprehensive analyses of the somatic alterations in cancer genomes.