As a marker of cancer progression, overexpression of γ-syn in ovarian cancer cell lines, A2780 and OVCAR5, was found to enhance tumorigenicity by constitutively activating Extracellular Signal-regulated Kinase-1/2 and down-regulating c-Jun N-terminal kinase 1 in response to a host of environmental stress signals (Pan et al., 2002). The gene discussed is MAPK3; the disease is ovarian carcinoma.