Under the microscope: DNA damage tracked through cell generations

Reilly EL and Aitken SJ

Nature 2025 May 21. Online ahead of print.

Instability of the genome is a hallmark of cancer that can arise when damaged DNA is carried across cell divisions, fuelling both small- and large-scale genetic variation in cells. Writing in Nature, Panagopoulos et al. present a multimodal platform that tracks single cells to uncover how DNA damage propagates unevenly through cell lineages. The authors’ approach reveals the origin and extent of differences in the traits and genomic stability of individual cells in each of the daughter and granddaughter generations produced from successive cell divisions.