In regards to the repertoire of somatic mutations, PALB2 mutations were significantly more frequent in the 16 PALB2-associated breast cancers with bi-allelic inactivation (n = 5, 31%) than in the 17 BRCA1− (n = 0) and 16 BRCA2-associated (n = 0) breast cancers with bi-allelic inactivation from TCGA (P = 0.02 and P = 0.04, respectively, Mann–Whitney U test; Fig. 5a, b, Supplementary Table 5). Here, PALB2 is linked to breast carcinoma.