Understanding Apoptosis In Cells May Lead To A Cancer Breakthrough

When a cell's chromosomes lose their ends, the cell usually kills itself to stem the genetic damage - University of Utah biologists say their discovery about how those cells evade suicide and start down the path to cancer may lead to new treatments. A new study of fruit flies is the first to show in animals that losing just one telomere, the end of a chromosome, can lead to many abnormalities in a cell's chromosomes, which are strands of DNA that carry genes. "The essential point is that loss of a single telomere may be a primary event that puts a cell on the road to cancer," says Kent Golic, a professor of biology at the University of Utah and senior author of the study, published in the journal Genetics. Read More...

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