Word: varmus
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Dates: during 1982-1982
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...many cancer viruses do not appear to contain oncogenes. These viruses seem to cause cancer in a less direct way, perhaps by altering genes that are already in the normal cell. Investigating this possibility, Microbiologists J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus of the University of California School of Medicine at San Francisco made an astonishing discovery: genes almost identical to the cancer-causing genes in viruses can be found in the normal cells of all manner of creatures, from fruit flies to humans. The supposition is that these harmless genes can easily be turned into the dangerous genes they...
Exactly what these potentially devastating genes are doing in healthy cells is not clear, but the fact that they are present in so many species suggests that they perform an important function. "God knows, they haven't been conserved through evolution just to make tumors," says Varmus. These genes may play a role during fetal development and then become quiescent, unless activated or altered by carcinogens or cancer viruses. They start out as "normal, good genes," explains Molecular Biologist Robert Weinberg of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "but they become damaged during an individual's lifetime. When damaged...