High-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSOC) is the most frequent type of ovarian cancer and has a poor outcome. It has been proposed that fallopian tube cancers may be precursors of HGSOC but evolutionary evidence for this hypothesis has been limited. Here, we perform whole-exome sequence and copy number analyses of laser capture microdissected fallopian tube lesions (p53 signatures, serous tubal intraepithelial carcinomas (STICs), and fallopian tube carcinomas), ovarian cancers, and metastases from nine patients. The majority of tumor-specific alterations in ovarian cancers were present in STICs, including those affecting TP53, BRCA1, BRCA2 or PTEN. Evolutionary analyses reveal that p53 signatures and STICs are precursors of ovarian carcinoma and identify a window of 7 years between development of a STIC and initiation of ovarian carcinoma, with metastases following rapidly thereafter. Our results provide insights into the etiology of ovarian cancer and have implications for prevention, early detection and therapeutic intervention of this disease.

Glioblastomas with EGFR amplification represent approximately 50% of newly diagnosed cases and recent studies have revealed frequent coexistence of multiple EGFR aberrations within the same tumor with implications for mutation cooperation and treatment resistance. However, bulk tumor sequencing studies cannot resolve the patterns of how the multiple EGFR aberrations coexist with other mutations within single tumor cells. Here we applied a population-based single-cell whole genome sequencing methodology to characterize genomic heterogeneity in EGFR amplified glioblastomas. Our analysis effectively identified clonal events, including a novel translocation of a super enhancer to the TERT promoter, as well as subclonal loss-of-heterozygosity and multiple EGFR mutational variants within tumors. Correlating the EGFR mutations onto the cellular hierarchy revealed that EGFR truncation variants (EGFRvII and EGFR Carboxyl-terminal deletions) identified in the bulk tumor segregate into non-overlapping subclonal populations. In vitro and in vivo functional studies show EGFRvII is oncogenic and sensitive to EGFR inhibitors currently in clinical trials. Thus the association between diverse activating mutations in EGFR and other subclonal mutations within a single tumor supports an intrinsic mechanism for proliferative and clonal diversification with broad implications in resistance to treatment.

Introduction Transposable element (TE) derived sequences comprise half of our genome and DNA methylome, and are presumed densely methylated and inactive. Examination of the genome-wide DNA methylation status within 928 TE subfamilies in human embryonic and adult tissues revealed unexpected tissue-specific and subfamily-specific hypomethylation signatures. Genes proximal to tissue-specific hypomethylated TE sequences were enriched for functions important for the tissue type and their expression correlated strongly with hypomethylation of the TEs. When hypomethylated, these TE sequences gained tissue-specific enhancer marks including H3K4me1 and occupancy by p300, and a majority exhibited enhancer activity in reporter gene assays. Many such TEs also harbored binding sites for transcription factors that are important for tissue-specific functions and exhibited evidence for evolutionary selection. These data suggest that sequences derived from TEs may be responsible for wiring tissue type-specific regulatory networks, and have acquired tissue-specific epigenetic regulation.

SUMMARY High-grade gliomas are notoriously insensitive to radiation and genotoxic drugs. Paradoxically, the p53 gene is structurally intact in the majority of these tumors. Resistance to genotoxic modalities in p53-positive gliomas is generally attributed to attenuation of p53 functions by mutations of other components within the p53 signaling axis, such as p14Arf, MDM2 and ATM, but this explanation is not entirely satisfactory. We show here that the central nervous system (CNS) restricted transcription factor Olig2 affects a key post-translational modification of p53 in both normal and malignant neural progenitors and thereby antagonizes the interaction of p53 with promoter elements of multiple target genes. In the absence of Olig2 function, even attenuated levels of p53 are adequate for biological responses to genotoxic damage.