Mutational Signature Mark Cancer’s Smoking Gun

Multimedia · Thu Nov 03 00:00:00 EDT 2016

OSTI ID:1333563

Alexandrov, Ludmil

A broad computational study of cancer genome sequences by Los Alamos National Laboratory with the UK’s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and other collaborators identifies telltale mutational signatures associated with smoking tobacco. The research demonstrates, for the first time, that smoking increases cancer risk by causing somatic mutations in tissues directly and indirectly exposed to tobacco smoke. The international study was published in the November 4 issue of Science. The analysis shows that tobacco smoking causes mutations leading to cancer by multiple distinct mechanisms, including by damaging DNA in organs and by speeding up a mutational cellular clock.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• OSTI ID: 1333563
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
CANCER
TOBACCO SMOKING
MUTATIONAL SIGNATURES
CIGARETTES
SUPERCOMPUTING