TERT and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: As shown in Figure 2A, we found that subjects with the rs920778 TT genotype had significantly lower TERT mRNA levels (mean ± SE) than those with the GG genotypes in normal esophagus tissues (0.128 ± 0.047 [n=18] vs. 0.493 ± 0.078 [n=17], P<0.01) or ESCC tissues (0.030 ± 0.006 [n=18] vs. 0.847 ± 0.120 [n=17], P<0.01).