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

BRCA2胚系突变是遗传性乳腺癌和卵巢癌的主要原因。BRCA2的一个主要功能是在DNA损伤修复中作为同源重组的调节因子。此外，BRCA2还在中心体调节中发挥重要作用，其功能障碍可能与乳腺癌的发生有关。尽管如此，详细的分子机制还没有被揭开。在本研究中，我们试图定位BRCA2的一个负责这一功能的分子区域。在培养的人细胞中外源表达了一系列BRCA2片段。对细胞中中心体的数量进行计数，以确定特定片段的过度表达是否会损害中心体的数量完整性。为此，我们开发了一种基于图像识别的中心体自动计数系统，它允许我们在没有人的偏见的情况下判断大量的转基因细胞。

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 inthe tumorigenesis of breast cancer. Even so, detail molecular mechanism isnot 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.