DNA mutation rates raise curtain on cause of cancer
Thursday, July 1, 2010 - 15:35
in Biology & Nature
What if we could understand why cancer develops? One idea that has emerged is that for a cell to transform into a cancer cell it must suffer a large number of mutations affecting different genes needed to control cell growth. Researchers have found that the process of repairing DNA damage also unexpectedly increases the rate of mutations and changes the kinds of mutations that arise.