1982 Articles

Oncogenes

Pollack, Robert

In his letter of 15 October (p. 214), John W. Littlefield points out that the cell line NIH 3T3 is an imperfect recipient for experiments designed to capture "oncogenes" by gene transfer from tumor cell genomic DNA. I agree. The genes so isolated by the laboratories of Weinberg, Wigler, Cooper, and others (Research News, 14 May, p. 724) are striking in their similarity to viral oncogenes and to each other. If we were to accept the notion that these are the genes mutated by environmental agents, then the target size for the environmental mutagenic component of carcinogenesis would be very small indeed, about 1/ 100,000 of the cell genome.