Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "Identification of genetic susceptibility loci for colorectal tumors in a genome-wide meta-analysis" ?
METHODS—We conducted a genome-wide association study that included 14 studies, 12,696 cases of colorectal tumors ( 11,870 cancer, 826 adenoma ), and 15,113 controls of European descent. The 10 most statistically significant, previously unreported findings were followed up in 6 studies ; these included 3056 colorectal tumor cases ( 2098 cancer, 958 adenoma ) and 6658 controls of European and Asian descent. In a large genome-wide association study, the authors associated polymorphisms close to nucleic acid binding protein 1 ( which encodes a DNA-binding protein involved in DNA repair ) with colorectal tumor risk. The authors also provided evidence for an association between colorectal tumor risk and polymorphisms in laminin gamma 1 ( this is the second gene in the Peters et al. RESULTS—Based on the combined analysis, the authors identified a locus that reached the conventional genome-wide significance level at less than 5. The roles of these genes and their products in cancer pathogenesis warrant further investigation.