Research Article Evaluation of Bax and Bak Gene Mutations and Expression in Breast Cancer

Copyright © 2014 Naglaa Mohamed Kholoussi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Genetic analyses have provided evidence to suggest that Bax and Bak are the essential genes for apoptosis in mammalians cells. This study aimed to search for biomarkers in breast cancer to be used as prognostic markers for the disease. The Bak and Bax genes expressions were analyzed in 23 breast cancer patients by RT-PCR technique. SSCP technique was used to detect the mobility of the abnormal fragment in Bak exon 4. PCR for Bax promoter was digested with Tau 1 restriction enzyme to identify a single polymorphism G(-248)A.The expression of Bak gene is related to several clinical factors of breast cancer. The analysis of Bax RNA showed 4 isoforms of Bax with different distributions in the normal and tumor tissues.These isoforms were Ba