“Everyone knows that smoking can cause cancer, but being able to explain one of the ways this works at a molecular level is an important step in understanding how our lifestyle affects our risk of cancer."
Furthermore, the researchers discovered that genes known as "tumor-suppressors," which produce proteins that ordinarily block aberrant cells from proliferating, were particularly affected by these stop-gain mutations leading to an uncontrolled growth of cancerous cells. Using robust computational methods, the researchers examined the DNA of over 12,000 tumor samples from 18 distinct cancer types. According to their findings, there was a clear correlation between smoking's distinctive DNA "footprint" and stop-gain mutations found in lung cancer.