Why DNA damage from smoking and UV rays cause cancer in some but not others
Scientists have found the first direct evidence of the powerful role our genetic makeup plays in influencing our risk of cancer, with inherited genes interacting with acquired genetic mutations to shape how tumours evolve. Environmental exposures – for example, cigarette smoke or sunlight – influence how much DNA damage occurs, and inherited genetic alterations can alter how many mutations accumulate.Not everyone exposed to the same environmental risk factors will develop cancer, however. Most smokers do not develop lung cancer – and some non-smokers develop lung cancer.
- ▪Scientists have found the first direct evidence of the powerful role our genetic makeup plays in influencing our risk of cancer, with inherited genes interacting with acquired genetic mutations to shape how tumours evolve.
- ▪Environmental exposures – for example, cigarette smoke or sunlight – influence how much DNA damage occurs, and inherited genetic alterations can alter how many mutations accumulate.Not everyone exposed to the same environmental risk factors
- ▪Most smokers do not develop lung cancer – and some non-smokers develop lung cancer.
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Record
| Original publisher | University of Cambridge |
| Canonical URL | https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/study-reveals-why-dna-damage-from-smoking-and-uv-rays-may-cause-cancer-in-some-people-but-not-others |
| Publication time | Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:15:19 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-30T14:57:03.392Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-30T14:57:03.392Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | I1VldXCn-FpP · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Scientists have found the first direct evidence of the powerful role our genetic makeup plays in influencing our risk of cancer, with inherited genes interacting with acquired genetic mutations to shape how tumours evolve. We’ve been able to show for the first time the extent to which genetic background influences both the mutation processes and the pathways leading to tumour development Duncan Odom The findings could explain why some people are more susceptible to cancer than others in the same environment and suggest that future cancer prevention and screening strategies may need to account more carefully for inherited genetics and population diversity.The research, published today in Nature and carried out in mice, suggests that responses to DNA-damaging cancer treatments could differ…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at University of Cambridge.
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