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Strands of evidence about cancer evolution

DNA damage can cause mutations due to failure of DNA repair and errors during DNA replication. Tracking the strand of the DNA double helix on which damage occurs has shed light on processes that affect tumour evolution.
  1. Trevor A. Graham

    1. Trevor A. Graham is at the Centre for Cancer Genomics and Computational Biology, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London EC1M 6BQ, UK.

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  2. Sarah E. McClelland

    1. Sarah E. McClelland is at the Centre for Cancer Genomics and Computational Biology, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London EC1M 6BQ, UK.

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How a cancer evolves and how mutations are generated are highly intertwined processes, and both are nearly impossible to observe directly. Instead, we are usually restricted to making inferences about them using data from a single snapshot in time after a cancer has formed. Writing in Nature, Aitken et al.1 show that, for a cell that has undergone DNA damage, such a snapshot provides remarkably rich information when the two DNA strands that form the double helix are considered independently.

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Nature 583, 207-209 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01815-6

References

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