Classical theories of carcinogenesis postulate that the accumulation of several somatic mutations is responsible for oncogenesis. However, these models do not explain how non-mutagenic carcinogens cause cancer. In addition, known mutation rates appear to be insufficient to account for observed cancer rates. Moreover, the current theory doesn't easily account for the long latencies observed in h...

There is a strong correlation between age, genomic instability, and the development of cancer. Working in yeast, Veatch et al. (2009) now propose that defects in the biogenesis of iron-sulfur clusters arising as a consequence of mitochondrial dysfunction contribute to the increase in genomic instability as cells age.

Copyright © 2015 by Hirosaki University. All rights reserved. Ionizing radiation is a potent genotoxic agent that can induce delayed biological effects referred to as genomic instability. Delayed chromosomal instability has been studied as a typical phenotype of genomic instability in the progeny of irradiated cells, but the mechanisms by which it arises remain obscure. The previous chromosome ...

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the colon associated with a high risk of colorectal cancer. This increased cancer risk is thought to result from the cellular damage induced by the inflammatory field. The aim of this study was to determine the pattern and time course of genomic instability occurring in UC-related neoplasia. Sites of cancer, dysplasia, and nondysplasi...

Introduction Exposure of normal human fibroblasts to ionizing radiation may cause a delayed instability of the genome in the descendants of the initially irradiated cells [1, 2]. This genomic instability appears as a de novo formation of structural chromosomal aberrations and is considered as a step towards malignant transformation and induced carcinogenesis [3]. The relevance of effects, relat...