Genetic Instability in Aging Yeast: A Metastable Hyperrecombinational State
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
We are all aware of changes that occur as a personreaches middle age and beyond—wrinkled skin, grayhair, poor vision, etc. But one particularly intriguing phenomenon is the dramatic rise in incidence of cancer withincreasing age: About 75% of all cancers are diagnosedafter the age of 55 (ACS 2004). Because cancer is typically considered a genetic disease—genetic alterationsare a hallmark of tumors and the inactivation of tumorsuppressor genes and/or activation of oncogenes facilitateoncogenesis (for review, see Hanahan and Weinberg2000)—it has been suggested that the link between agingand increased incidence of cancer may simply be a steadyaccumulation of genetic changes over the course of a person's life. The increased chance of attaining a sufficientnumber of changes to elicit oncogenesis may explain theexponential increase in cancer incidence with advancingage (Armitage and Doll 1954, 1957; Frank 2004)...
