Abstract
A novel complex mutation consisting of a small deletion/insertion (3958del5ins4) was found in the breast cancer-1 gene (BRCA-1) in three unrelated French breast and/or ovarian cancer families. These mutations occurred at the same nucleotide position of the 3′ end of exon 11. The wild-type sequence, CTCAG, was deleted and replaced by AGGC in the three families. The consequence is the generation of a stop codon, TAG, resulting in a truncated protein. We propose two different mechanisms to explain the generation of this complex mutation: (i) the simultaneous occurrence of a deletion and an insertion in a stem-loop structure and (ii) the abortive integration of a human transposable element (Tigger 1) that deleted 5 nucleotides and inserted a 4-nucleotide “scar”, corresponding to the 5′ extremity of the transposon.
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Received: 26 November 1997 / Accepted: 6 February 1998
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Presneau, N., Laplace-Marieze, V., Sylvain, V. et al. New mechanism of BRCA-1 mutation by deletion/insertion at the same nucleotide position in three unrelated French breast/ovarian cancer families. Hum Genet 103, 334–339 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/s004390050826
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s004390050826