Cancer cells appear to damage their own genetic material as a byproduct of running growth genes at extreme levels, and the resulting breaks cluster in predictable places, according to laboratory research published in Science Advances.
The proposed cycle is self-reinforcing. Powerful regulatory regions called super-enhancers push nearby oncogenes into overdrive. That intense activity strains the DNA and produces double-strand breaks, the most serious form of genetic damage. Cells repair the breaks, but repair is imperfect, and repeated rounds of breaking and mending seed the mutations that let tumors evolve.
