Cancer is a disease of aging fueled by the accumulation of somatic mutations. While
mutations in tumors are well characterized, little is known about the early mutational …

Aging is associated with an increased risk of cancer, possibly in part because of an age-
related increase in mutations in normal tissues. Due to their extremely low abundance …

Background To shed light on the earliest events in oncogenesis, there is growing interest in
understanding the mutational landscapes of normal tissues across ages. In the last decade …

Spontaneously occurring mutations accumulate in somatic cells throughout a person's
lifetime. The majority of these mutations do not have a noticeable effect, but some can alter …

Editorial summary Signatures of mutagenesis provide a powerful tool for dissecting the role
of somatic mutations in both normal and pathological processes. Significantly, cancer …

Accelerating technological advances have allowed the widespread genomic profiling of
tumors. As yet, however, the vast catalogues of mutations that have been identified have …

DNA mutations are inevitable. Despite proficient DNA repair mechanisms, somatic cells
accumulate mutations during development and aging, generating cells with different …

The collective somatic mutations observed in a cancer are the outcome of multiple
mutagenic processes that have been operative over the lifetime of a patient. Each process …

Systematic efforts are underway to decipher the genetic changes associated with tumor
initiation and progression,. However, widespread clinical application of this information is …

The sheer size of the human genome makes it improbable that identical somatic mutations
at the exact same position are observed in multiple tumours solely by chance. The scarcity of …