2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Function of novel BRCA2-associating proteins in centrosomal regulation and DNA repair

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23590355
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Section	一般
Research Field	Pathological medical chemistry
Research Institution	Tokyo Medical and Dental University
Principal Investigator	TAKENAKA Katsuya 東京医科歯科大学, 難治疾患研究所, 助教 (20378706)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	OGI Tomoo 長崎大学, 7原爆後障害医療研究所, 准教授 (80508317)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2013
Keywords	乳癌 / BRCA / 中心体 / 画像認識
Research Abstract	BRCA2 germline mutations account for the majority of heredity breast and ovarian cancer. A major function of BRCA2 is known as a regulator of homologous recombination in DNA damage repair. In addition, BRCA2 also plays an important role in centrosomal regulation, whose dysfunction might be involved in the tumorigenesis of breast cancer. Even so, detail molecular mechanism is not yet uncovered. In the present study, we tried to locate a molecular region of BRCA2 responsible for this function. Series of BRCA2 fragments were exogenously expressed in human cultured cells. Numbers of centrosome in a cell are counted to see if an overexpression of a specific fragment could impair a numerical integrity of centrosomes. For this purpose we developed an automated centrosome-counting system based on image recognition, which allows us to judge a large number of transfected cells without human bias.