Selection For Or Against Escape From Nonsense Me Diate D Decay Is A Novel Signature For The Detection Of Cancer Genes

Escape from nonsense mediated mRNA decay (NMD-) can produce activated or inactivated gene products, and bias in rates of escape can identify functionally important genes in germline disease. We hypothe-sized that the same would be true of cancer genes, and tested for NMD-bias within The Cancer Genome Atlas pan-cancer somatic mutation dataset. We identify 29 genes that show significantly elevated or sup -pressed rates of NMD-. This novel approach to cancer gene discovery reveals genes not previously cata-loged as potentially tumorigenic, and identifies many potential driver mutations in known cancer genes for functional characterization. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier Inc.