Mathematical Model for Mutually Exclusive Mutations in Cancer

Now here is something important. As I learned the hard way, doing research is very different from reading about it. Reading a paper could take, say 45 minutes, but the paper itself could easily contain years of work. What I’m getting at here is that producing good scientific research is rigorous and requires resilience, which is something you�ll have the opportunity to develop. So don’t feel distraught if you are struggling? in fact, you’re supposed to, or you’re not learning! … Devising effective strategies for treating cancer requires elucidating molecular mechanisms through which the disease initiates and spreads. A critical step for doing so is distinguishing driver mutations from passenger mutations, the former contributing to tumorigenesis while the latter, though abundant, being nonfunctional . . . An accurate statistical model, balancing computational intensity and accuracy, was developed for the evaluation of mutual exclusivity between driver genes in the human genome across twelve cancer types. With this model, driver genes were identified for each biological pathway and a novel algorithmic strategy based on the previous mutual exclusivity algorithm was devised to evaluate relationships between pathways.

• Medicine