Investigation of the association between the PPP1R16A gene and papillary thyroid carcinoma

Thyroid malignancies are approximately 1 % of all types of human malignancies. Papillary thyroid carcinoma that derives from follicular cells and a differentiated type of thyroid cancer is the most common of thyroid cancer and it represents 85% of all thyroid malignancies. The gene PPP1R16A encodes one of subunits of protein serine/threonine phosphatase. It is known that protein phosphatase 1 plays an important role for control of glycogen metabolism, muscle contraction, cell progression, neuronal activities, splicing of RNA, mitosis, cell division, apoptosis, protein synthesis and regulation of membrane receptors and channels. Previous studies determined that, there is a relationship between PPP1R16A gene and papillary thyroid carcinoma that the expression of this gene is reduced in papillary thyroid carcinoma. In this study, tumour and normal tissues from 17 individuals who are examined and diagnosed as papillary thyroid carcinoma at the Pathology Department Faculty of Medicine in Gaziantep University were studied. The exons and approximately a 3000 bp on 5? upstream of the gene were screened in order to delineate the association of this gene segment to papillary thyroid carcinoma. To reveal the differences between tumour and normal tissues, Polymerase Chain Reaction, SSCP (Single-strand conformation polymorphism) method and then DNA sequence analysis of 17 individuals were carried out. The nucleotide screening of 16 individuals revealed that only one had the tranformation of C nucleotide into G nucleotide which has the SNP reference number of 111830432. By the help of the studies planned for the future we aim to put forth the relationship between papillary thyroid cancer and PPP1R16A gene and we believe will gain a different perspective for diagnosis and treatment of this disease.