I\'m having a conceptual nightmare trying to understand when a group of cells ma

Question

I'm having a conceptual nightmare trying to understand when a group of cells may become cancerous and the more resources I consult the more confused I seem to get.

In order for a cell to become cancerous, does it have to mutate to knock out tumour suppressor genes and have a proto-oncogene become an oncogene?

I'm currently working on the basis that that is the case, or at least that a mutated TSG on its own will not cause uncontrolled division. However wikipedia seems to suggest that an oncogene alone can cause uncontrolled division with a functional TSG in place.

It could be a flaw in the idea I have that tumour suppressor genes only trigger apoptosis once a cell has started to divide rapidly, are they actually carrying it out to a regular schedule independent of oncogene presence?   

Explanation / Answer

There is a nice nature paper by Dr. Micheal Stratton et al. that I think might be a good place to start.

I think answering you question is complex, because different cancers will actually have different mechanisms that trigger their onset and aggressiveness and as such some have more complex mutational landscapes than others.

A good question to ask yourself is : what is a driver mutation and what is a passenger mutation. A driver mutation is usually what is driving the cancer, and it can be a proto-oncogene or TSG. Passenger mutations don't really have as much of an impact and result from the destructive tendencies of the driver mutations.

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