Echinoderms form part of the diet of many organisms such as bony fish, sharks, eider ducks, gulls, crabs, gastropod molluscs, sea otters, Arctic foxes and humans.
About 4% of patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma have a chromosomal rearrangement that generates a fusion gene between EML4 ('echinoderm microtubule-associated protein-like 4') and ALK ('anaplastic lymphoma kinase'), which results in constitutive kinase activity that contributes to carcinogenesis and seems to drive the malignant phenotype.
EML4-ALK positive lung cancer is a medical term that refers to a primary malignant lung tumor whose cells contain a characteristic abnormal configuration of DNA wherein the echinoderm microtubule-associated protein-like 4 (EML4) gene is fused to the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene.
DNA sequencing was done on Xyloplax medusiformis and on a range of about twenty other varied species of echinoderm.