In our analysis a significant increase of cancer risk was observed for ATM p.Asp1853Asn heterozygotes which corroborates the finding that missense polypeptides will compete with normal ATM polypeptides in complex formation, and that the functionally abnormal missense polypeptide will sequester key regulators or substrates into nonfunctional complexes, resulting in dominant negative cellular phenotype [31]. Here, ATM is linked to cancer.