By: TOP500 Team

Cancer researchers are using the Abel supercomputer at the University of Oslo in Norway to detect which versions of genes are only found in cancer cells. Every form of cancer, even every tumour, has its own distinct variants.

"This charting may help tailor the treatment to each patient," says Rolf Skotheim, who is affiliated with the Centre for Cancer Biomedicine and the research group for biomedical informatics at the University of Oslo, as well as the Department of Molecular Oncology at Oslo University Hospital.

His research group is working to identify the genes that cause bowel and prostate cancer, which are both common diseases. There are 4,000 new cases of bowel cancer in Norway every year. Only six out of ten patients survive the first five years. Prostate cancer affects 5,000 Norwegians every year. Nine out of ten survive.

Comparisons between healthy and diseased cells

In order to identify the genes that lead to cancer, Skotheim and his research group are comparing genetic material in tumours with genetic material in healthy cells. In order to understand this process, a brief introduction to our genetic material is needed:

Our genetic material consists of just over 20,000 genes. Each gene consists of thousands of base pairs, represented by a specific sequence of the four building blocks, adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, popularly abbreviated to A, T, G, and C. The sequence of these building blocks is the very recipe for the gene. Our whole DNA consists of some six billion base pairs.

Read the full article on international science grid this week.