
MMTV has been used as an
insertional mutagen to hunt for genes that are important for the development
of breast cancer. MMTV can insert its genome into host genes and then alter
their functions by either reprogramming their expression (blue bent arrow) or
truncating (red arrow) the coding region or both. So far a total of nine INT
genes have been discovered. Among them, INT6 is the lone INT gene whose function
remains unknown.