n-ras and k-ras Mutations Among Some Iraqi Patients with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Abstract

Somatic mutations which influence the activity of RAS genes, n-, h-, and k-ras, are recognized mainly in codons 12, 13, and 61 of exons 2 and 3 in human cancers. This persuades to search in coding genes suspected to be contributing to leukemogenesis such as n-ras and k-ras mutations that  may associate with acute lymphoblastic leukemia for some Iraqi patients using a combination of high resolution melting-polymerase chain reaction (HRM-PCR)  scanning with sequence analysis . This study was carried out on fifty Iraqi patients (34 male, 16 female), (2-70 years of age) with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) , including 20 pre-treated , 15 under-treated and 15 relapsed patients compared with a sample consisted of 50 apparently healthy individuals as control group collected randomly from population living in Baghdad (4 - 66 years of age).

      Of  50 ALL Iraqi patients  , 6 patients were identified with an abnormal melting curve  showing low frequency  of ras genes mutations , this result is translated a poor prognostic for ras mutations in ALL . According to the results of this study the c.34 in exon 2 (codon 12) was a hot spot for n-ras mutations and c.35 in exon 2 (codon 12) was a hot spot for k-ras mutations in ALL Iraqi patients , while no codon 61 mutations were detected for either n-ras or k-ras gene .