When Cells Go Bad: Cells That Avoid Suicide May Become Cancerous

Thursday, October 2, 2008 - 09:21 in Biology & Nature

When a cell's chromosomes lose their ends, the cell usually kills itself to stem the genetic damage. But now biologists have discovered how those cells can evade suicide and start down the path to cancer. The 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.

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