Figure 4.

Our study indicates that MCC alteration is unlikely to be a driver of colorectal tumorigenesis at early stages (top). The bottom illustrates our hypothesis that alteration of MCC in human CRCs occurs as a result of its proximity to APC in the human genome (~200 kb apart). However, because MCC is distant from APC (~10 Mb apart) in the mouse genome, agents that caused APC alternations have no effect on MCC; thus, like other genes without causative roles in tumorigenesis, MCC remains intact in the mouse tumors.