Genome evolution in yeast reveals connections between rare mutations in human cancers

Abstract

Cancer cells are riddled with mutations. Less than one percent of these are thought to be mutations that drive cancer phenotypes. However, a recent study conducted on the yeast knockout collections by Teng et al. [Mol. Cell (2013) 52: 485–494] provides hard evidence that single gene deletions/mutations in most non-essential genes can drive the selection for cancer-like mutations.

Keywords

• yeast knockouts
• genome evolution
• secondary mutations
• cancer progression