Carbon 14 Decay as a Source of Somatic Point Mutations in Genes Correlated with Cancer Diagnoses

by Patrick, Alexander D. and Patrick, Brett E.

Citation: Patrick, A.D. & Patrick, B.E., Carbon 14 Decay as a Source of Somatic Point Mutations in Genes Correlated with Cancer Diagnoses, Stable Isotope Foundation, Grants Pass, OR (2017).

Abstract

Carbon-14 decay was identified as a source of point mutations in genes associated with cancer diagnoses in glia, neurons, lymphocytes, adipocytes, vascular endothelial cells, hepatocytes, and bone marrow cells. Cumulative mean ¹⁴C decay in DNA was modeled for multiple tissue types for people born from 1973 to 2013 in the Northern hemisphere, and compared to 73,182 diagnoses of glioma, lymphoma, liposarcoma, vascular endothelial cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, and bone cancer in the U.S. between 1973 and 2013. Significant correlations (p ≤ 0.0001) with R² from 0.950 to 0.996 were found for several histologies. The relative pathogenic sensitivity of 85 genes with the most frequent mutations was identified from review of 289,322 mutations in sequences from 23,721 samples and diagnoses were correlated with ¹⁴C decay in genes. ¹⁴C decay nitrogen substitution was identified as a source of transcription errors analogous with the two most common point mutations cataloged during genome sequencing.

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