COX8A and neoplasm: To determine the presence of amplified RRAS2 gene in tumor and normal tissue (blood) samples from BC patients we also used an alternate approach: we measured the abundance of genomic RRAS2 using qPCR primers that anneal to the coding sequence of RRAS2 in a specific manner and referred it to the abundance of genomic COX8A. RRAS2 is encoded in the short arm of chromosome 11 (11p5.2) and COX8A in the long arm (11q13.1), near the centromere.