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i’ve worked in R&D for DNA sequencer companies for over a decade. this is a pretty good TLDR on why genetic testing is a “complicated” test. you kind of need co
by mylons 2y ago
i’ve worked in R&D for DNA sequencer companies for over a decade. this is a pretty good TLDR on why genetic testing is a “complicated” test. you kind of need continuous testing over your lifetime to see what’s changing due to cell division errors. those are the true monsters that cause cancer.
one study i worked on showed that on average every 12th cigarette you smoked created a mutation in your DNA. usually benign but that’s another path for how it starts.
- _yb2s 2y agoThe mutations will just be in single cells a few cells- you’d have to be liquified in order to sequence your whole body for cancer mutations. Leukemia would be an exception though, as you could find that from a blood sample.
- mylons 2y agoright. single cell analysis is a big thing people are hoping to achieve. the cigarette study i mentioned was looking at cells in the lungs and tumor samples iirc.
- adamredwoods 2y agoAnd I hope we get there. My wife died because her cancer mutated in such a way to evade chemo. Why? How could we have discovered this sooner? Do we have the tools to accelerate this and stay ahead of cancer mutations?
- mylons 2y agoI am so sorry for your loss. I’m sadly a CS guy living in a biology world and don’t have the foresight to predict anything like that.
- _yb2s 2y agoYou’re not understanding what I am saying- there is no way to identify which single cell has a mutation until it is already growing a tumor. There is no way to do what you are proposing -using sequencing to detect cancer mutations early before they turn into cancer- on a living person, even in principle. Single cell sequencing is for individual cells in a liquid culture- not living organisms- and the cells are destroyed to sequence them.
- bpodgursky 2y agoThis is about germline variants for BRCA etc, not somatic mutations.