A “Mistake” to the Rescue: Blocking Cancer’s Escape!

Cells have two sets of instructions that tell them how to build and run the body: the nuclear DNA and the mitochondrial DNA. Most of the time, mistakes in these instructions can cause problems, sometimes even cancer. But in one special case, we found an error that may have actually helped! A patient had a liver tumor with a tiny mistake: one missing letter in the mitochondrial DNA. This small error affected a protein called ND6 and made it work less well. So, how could this mistake possibly be a good thing? This is the mystery we explored in our study.