Figure 7.

Mitochondrial genes are selectively upregulated in human breast cancer epithelial cells. Using a bio-informatics approach, we re-analyzed the transcriptional profiles of epithelial cancer cells and adjacent stromal tissue, which were separated by laser-capture microdissection (from n = 28 human breast cancer patients). Note that mitochondrial genes encoding subunits of complexes I–V, which perform oxidative phosphorylation are upregulated > 4-fold in epithelial cancer cells as compared with adjacent stromal tissue. Only transcripts showing a > 4-fold increase were selected for the analysis, so this probably underestimates the overall increase in mitochondrial OXPHOS capacity.⁷²