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CARCINOGENESIS

Are carcinogens direct mutagens?

Nature Genetics volume 52, pages 1137–1138 (2020)Cite this article

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In a classical view of carcinogenesis, carcinogens directly cause mutations. In this issue, Riva et al. explore the effects of 20 known or suspected human carcinogens and find discernible mutational signatures for only three of them.

Cells in somatic tissues accumulate mutations, including single-nucleotide variants, short insertions and deletions (indels) and larger structural variants, over the course of their life. These mutations are contributed by several dozen mutational processes and result from an interplay between mutagenic agents/processes and DNA-repair mechanisms1,2.

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Fig. 1: In the classical model of carcinogenesis, a chemical directly interacts with DNA and leads to mutational changes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain

    Nuria Lopez-Bigas & Abel Gonzalez-Perez

  2. Research Program on Biomedical Informatics, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Nuria Lopez-Bigas & Abel Gonzalez-Perez

  3. Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain

    Nuria Lopez-Bigas

Authors
  1. Nuria Lopez-Bigas
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  2. Abel Gonzalez-Perez
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Correspondence to Nuria Lopez-Bigas.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Lopez-Bigas, N., Gonzalez-Perez, A. Are carcinogens direct mutagens?. Nat Genet 52, 1137–1138 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-020-00730-w

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