IDENTIFICATION OF SPECIFIC MUTATIONS IN HUMAN RAS GENE

Cancer is a group of disease characterized by unregulated cell growth and spread of cells from site of origin to other sites in body. Two main genetic changes lead to cancer they are inactivation of tumour suppressor gene and activation of proto-oncogene. Ras gene is a proto-oncogene, when this gene activated it stimulates signalling pathway and that causes unregulated proliferation of cells. Ras family is a group of three precursors H-Ras, K-Ras and N-Ras. It was analyzed that more than 30% of cancers occurs due to Ras gene. But most of the Ras related cancers are occur due to mutations in H-Ras gene. In H-Ras gene codons 12, 13 and 61 are hotspots. Bioinformatics tools are help to find out the amino acid sequence from which got the gene sequence of H-Ras. Using the H-Ras gene sequence, six primer pairs were designed to amplify the DNA of patients with the potential mutations. Designed primers can be used for the diagnosis of H-Ras related cancers.