Editing Centromere (section)

== Dysfunction and disease ==
It has been known that centromere misregulation contributes to mis-segregation of chromosomes, which is strongly related to cancer and miscarriage. Notably, overexpression of many centromere genes have been linked to cancer malignant phenotypes. Overexpression of these centromere genes can increase genomic instability in cancers. Elevated genomic instability on one hand relates to malignant phenotypes; on the other hand, it makes the tumor cells more vulnerable to specific adjuvant therapies such as certain chemotherapies and radiotherapy.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Zhang W, Mao JH, Zhu W, Jain AK, Liu K, Brown JB, Karpen GH | title = Centromere and kinetochore gene misexpression predicts cancer patient survival and response to radiotherapy and chemotherapy | journal = Nature Communications | volume = 7 | pages = 12619 | date = August 2016 | pmid = 27577169 | pmc = 5013662 | doi = 10.1038/ncomms12619 | bibcode = 2016NatCo...712619Z }}</ref> Instability of centromere repetitive DNA was recently shown in cancer and aging.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Giunta S, Funabiki H | title = Integrity of the human centromere DNA repeats is protected by CENP-A, CENP-C, and CENP-T | journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | volume = 114 | issue = 8 | pages = 1928–1933 | date = February 2017 | pmid = 28167779 | pmc = 5338446 | doi = 10.1073/pnas.1615133114 | bibcode = 2017PNAS..114.1928G | doi-access = free }}</ref>