Cell (IMAGE)

WashU Medicine

Cell

Caption

Even in a healthy people, stem cells in the blood accumulate hundreds of mutations. When a cancer-initiating event occurs in one of these stem cells, it captures the genetic history of that cell, including the earlier mutations, and drives leukemia to develop. A schematic of that evolution is pictured above.

Credit

Joshua McMichael, The Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis

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Credit to Joshua McMichael at The Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis

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