PMS2 and colonic neoplasm: Hypoxia has also been shown to induce downregulation of MLH1 and PMS2 both in normal cells and in a variety of cancer cells, including hepatocellular, breast, and colon cancer cells (Nakamura et al., 2008; Rodríguez-Jiménez et al., 2008); while the downregulation of MLH1 occurs at the transcription level, that of PMS2 occurs at the protein level probably through destabilization of the protein (Mihaylova et al., 2003).