WIKIMEDIA, POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY VOLUME 20Researchers have uncovered the genomic mutations and DNA methylation patterns likely caused by tobacco smoke in 17 types of cancerous tumors. A comprehensive survey of mutations likely caused by carcinogens found in tobacco smoke by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and their colleagues was published today (November 3) in Science. The work provides a window into understanding the mechanisms by which tobacco smoke induces mutations that can lead to cancer in tissues that are directly or indirectly exposed to it.
“Comparing the mutations in cancers arising in smokers and non-smokers using genomic sequencing has never been done to this extent,” Gerd Pfeifer of the Van Andel Research Institute in Michigan, who was not involved in the work but penned an accompanying editorial, told The Scientist.
“This study highlights how important primary prevention remains for tobacco-related cancers and how much we still don’t know about the details of how tobacco causes cancer,” said Steve Rozen of the Duke-NUS Center for Computational Biology in Singapore who also was not involved in the study.
Ludmil Alexandrov of the Los Alamos National Lab, along with the Wellcome Trust’s Michael Stratton and their colleagues, used whole-genome sequences of 610 tumors and the exomes of 4,633 additional tumors, together covering 17 ...
