Figure 3.

Accumulation of small genomic alterations in cancer-related genes. Small genomic alterations in oncogenes tend to be activating mutations, which cluster at very specific locations (“hotspots”), whereas small genomic alterations in tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) tend to be inactivating mutations and may occur across the full length of the gene. The design of a high-quality genomic assay needs to account for these characteristics in order to identify relevant alterations across cancer-related genes in an efficient manner.