Immortal DNA strand hypothesis

A community portal about Immortal DNA strand hypothesis with blogs, videos, and photos. According to Wikipedia.org: The immortal DNA strand hypothesis was proposed in 1975 by John Cairns as a mechanism for adult stem cells to minimize... [more]

A community portal about Immortal DNA strand hypothesis with blogs, videos, and photos. According to Wikipedia.org: The immortal DNA strand hypothesis was proposed in 1975 by John Cairns as a mechanism for adult stem cells to minimize mutations in their genomes. This hypothesis proposes that instead of segregating their DNA during mitosis in a random manner, adult stem cells divide their DNA asymmetrically, and retain a distinct template set of DNA strands in each division. By retaining the same set of template DNA strands, adult stem cells would pass mutations arising from errors in DNA replication on to non-stem cell daughters that soon terminally differentiate. Passing on these replication errors would allow adult stems cells to reduce their rate of accumulation of mutations that could lead to cancer.