Synthesis Essay On Tobacco

The detrimental health affects caused by smoking tobacco have long been known in our society. Tobacco smoke is composed of a complex, chemical mixture of roughly 60 known carcinogens (Alexandrov, et al., 2016). Smoking tobacco and exposure to other carcinogens increases human risk for cancer significantly by enhancing DNA mutation rates. Different carcinogens cause slightly different types of DNA damage in humans that eventually lead to cancer (Ehrenberg, 2016). These unique patterns of mutations that occur in different types of cancer tissue are what makes each carcinogenic mutation unique and leave behind their own mutational signature on the cancer genome. These signatures can be used as a physiological ‘receipt’ to assess the history of cancerous exposures in patients and can then be useful for cancer prevention, therapies and prognostics (Helleday, Eshtad, & Nik-Zainal, 2014). Although carcinogenic cancer risk is known from smoking tobacco, some molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis is still not …show more content…
DNA damage can range from the formation of DNA adducts, base substitutions, insertions, and deletions (Alexandrov, et al., 2016), genomic structural rearrangements, chromosomal instability (Helleday, Eshtad, & Nik-Zainal, 2014), over activity of DNA repair mechanisms, damage to mitochondrial DNA and microRNA, excessive apoptosis, and damage to genes related to cellular respiration (Izzotti & Pulliero, 2015). The type and progression of damages to the genome that occur depend on the intensity of tobacco smoke exposure and the length of exposure, The human body has many defense mechanisms against damage to DNA (sweeping cells, detoxifying metabolic reacions, etc.), and the progression of carcinogenesis can only occur if the amount of mutations are able to overwhelm the body’s defense