MACROD2 and cancer: We began this study with the goal of validating two tumor suppressor gene candidates that were focally deleted at high frequency particularly in colorectal cancer, A2BP1 and MACROD2. In contrast to the results obtained by screening focal deletions in liver cancer, we did not find that these genes were tumor suppressors, which prompted us to take a genome-wide look at the properties of focally deleted genes in a large dataset of DNA copy number alterations affecting over 1000 cancer samples.