Ovarian carcinomas with mutations in the tumour suppressor BRCA2 are particularly sensitive to platinum compounds. However, such carcinomas ultimately develop cisplatin resistance. The mechanism of that resistance is largely unknown. Here we show that acquired resistance to cisplatin can be mediated by secondary intragenic mutations in BRCA2 that restore the wild-type BRCA2 reading frame. First, in a cisplatin-resistant BRCA2-mutated breast-cancer cell line, HCC1428, a secondary genetic change in BRCA2 rescued BRCA2 function. Second, cisplatin selection of a BRCA2-mutated pancreatic cancer cell line, Capan-1 (refs 3, 4), led to five different secondary mutations that restored the wild-type BRCA2 reading frame. All clones with secondary mutations were resistant both to cisplatin and to a poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor (AG14361). Finally, we evaluated recurrent cancers from patients whose primary BRCA2-mutated ovarian carcinomas were treated with cisplatin. The recurrent tumour that acquired cisplatin resistance had undergone reversion of its BRCA2 mutation. Our results suggest that secondary mutations that restore the wild-type BRCA2 reading frame may be a major clinical mediator of acquired resistance to platinum-based chemotherapy.

The human Y chromosome began to evolve from an autosome hundreds of millions of years ago, acquiring a sex-determining function and undergoing a series of inversions that suppressed crossing over with the X chromosome1,2. Little is known about the Y chromosome’s recent evolution because only the human Y chromosome has been fully sequenced. Prevailing theories hold that Y chromosomes evolve by gene loss, the pace of which slows over time, eventually leading to a paucity of genes, and stasis3,4. These theories have been buttressed by partial sequence data from newly emergent plant and animal Y chromosomes5-8, but they have not been tested in older, highly evolved Y chromosomes like that of humans. We therefore finished sequencing the male-specific region of the Y chromosome (MSY) in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, achieving levels of accuracy and completion previously reached for the human MSY. We then compared the MSYs of the two species and found that they differ radically in sequence structure and gene content, implying rapid evolution during the past 6 million years. The chimpanzee MSY harbors twice as many massive palindromes as the human MSY, yet it has lost large fractions of the MSY protein-coding genes and gene families present in the last common ancestor. We suggest that the extraordinary divergence of the chimpanzee and human MSYs was driven by four synergistic factors: the MSY’s prominent role in sperm production, genetic hitchhiking effects in the absence of meiotic crossing over, frequent ectopic recombination within the MSY, and species differences in mating behavior. While genetic decay may be the principal dynamic in the evolution of newly emergent Y chromosomes, wholesale renovation is the paramount theme in the ongoing evolution of chimpanzee, human, and perhaps other older MSYs.

Human subtelomeres are polymorphic patchworks of inter-chromosomal segmental duplications at the ends of chromosomes. We provide evidence here that these patchworks arose recently through repeated translocations between chromosome ends. We assess the relative contribution of the major modes of ectopic DNA repair to the formation of subtelomeric duplications and find that nonhomologous end-joining predominates. Once subtelomeric duplications arise, they are prone to homology-based sequence transfers as evidenced by incongruent phylogenetic relationships of neighboring sections. Inter-chromosomal recombination of subtelomeres is a potent force for recent change. Cytogenetic and sequence analyses reveal that pieces of the subtelomeric patchwork changed location and copy number during primate evolution with unprecedented frequency. Half of known subtelomeric sequence formed recently through human-specific sequence transfers and duplications. Subtelomeric dynamics result in a gene-duplication rate significantly higher than the genome average and could have both advantageous and pathological consequences in human biology. More generally, our analyses suggest an evolutionary cycle between segmental polymorphisms and genome rearrangements.The human genome contains an abundance of large DNA segments that duplicated during the last 40 million years 1,2 . These segmental duplications (SDs) represent ≥5% of the genome 2 and are found frequently near centromeres and telomeres 3 . SDs are emerging as significant factors in chromosomal rearrangements leading to disease 4 and rapid gene innovation 2 , but the mechanisms by which they form are not well understood. Here, we focus on the unusually dense concentrations of inter-chromosomal SDs comprising human subtelomeres, which form the transition zones between chromosome-specific sequence and the arrays of telomeric repeats capping each chromosomal end. Previous cytogenetic studies showed that human subtelomeres are strikingly polymorphic in content -large segments can be present in or absent from normal alleles 5 -and that copy number of subtelomeric segments can vary among higher primates 6-9 . This natural plasticity combined with documented expression of several human subtelomeric genes 10,11 suggests that the evolutionary dynamics of subtelomeric regions could contributeCorrespondence and requests for materials should be addressed to B.J.T. (e-mail: btrask@fhcrc.org Complex inter-related structuresOur "paralogy map" of subtelomeric SDs (Fig. 1, Table S1) uses all finished sequences of genomic clones submitted to GenBank before April 2003. The map comprises ~2.6 Mbp of sequence present in two or more of 33 human subtelomeres (including three allelic pairs). The seven completely sequenced subtelomeres in the set are bounded distally by 0.5-2.4 kbp of various tandemly repeated units 13 called telomere-associated repeats (TAR1) and a short sample of the native telomeric arrays 14 . Numerous degenerate telomere-like repeats and TAR1 elements are also situated at varying...

A cDNA clone encoding the human homolog of rat Jagged1 was isolated from normal human marrow. Analyses of human stromal cell lines indicate that this gene, designated hJagged1, is expressed by marrow stromal cells typified by the cell line HS-27a, which supports the long-term maintenance of hematopoietic progenitor cells. G-CSF-induced differentiation of 32D cells expressing Notch1 was inhibited by coculturing with HS-27a. A peptide corresponding to the Delta/Serrate/LAG-2 domain of hJagged1 and supernatants from COS cells expressing a soluble form of the extracellular portion of hJagged1 were able to mimic this effect. These observations suggest that hJagged1 may function as a ligand for Notch1 and play a role in mediating cell fate decisions during hematopoiesis.