Name: Victoria
Status: Student
Grade: 9-12
Location: MD
Country: United States
Date: July 2008
Question:
How is nitrosoamines linked to cancer and what are they
anyway?
Replies:
To see the structure of nitrosamines, search nitrosamine on Wikipedia.
Nitrosamines cause cancer by inducing mutations in somatic (body) cells.
Almost all cancers arise as a result of a mutation in a body cell which
inactivates the cell's control mechanism that prevents the cell from
dividing too often. All tumors are a clone of mutated cells that started
from one mutated cell, so anything that causes mutations can be expected
to cause cancer. A mutation is any change in the base pair sequence in a
cell's DNA. This theory of carcinogenesis is known as the somatic
mutation hypothesis.
NEWTON is an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators, sponsored and operated by Argonne National Laboratory's Educational Programs, Andrew Skipor, Ph.D., Head of Educational Programs.
