Cancer, we are told, is a disease of the genes. It originates in mutations in the DNA. But a paper published by a Weizmann Institute group in Cell Reports flips that idea sideways by about 90 degrees: For at least some types of the disease, the healthy, non-mutated version of a gene is no less of a driving force behind the development of cancer than its mutated form.
Prof. Yoram Groner, who led the research, describes the situation as a “balance of terror.” Until now, researchers have assumed that, when a mutation causes cancer it becomes dominant in the cell, overriding the second copy of…
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