DNA mutations in normal skin occur at high rates without cancerous growth. But when the skin’s architecture is broken down, those mutations can lead to cancer. Maintaing the skin’s architecture is critical to skin health.

Mutations Are Everywhere, But Cancer Isn’t

Scientists have looked at UV-exposed eyelid skin of middle-aged adults, and found that a square inch of normal, non-cancerous skin was riddled with mutations, many of them considered cancer drivers. The number of mutations in normal skin tissue rivaled the number seen in skin tumors, and exceeded the number of mutations seen in other tumor types, like breast cancer. Such findings once again set researchers’ expectations about how powerfully these mutations could promote cancer. There’s more to cancer than just mutations in our cells.

It’s The Architecture Stupid, Not the DNA

Prof. Dr. Cyrus Ghajar, Ph.D., a scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, has noted that cancer-driving mutations are defined using animal studies. After identifying what is thought to be a common cancer-associated mutation in human cancers, researchers introduce the mutations into mice to see if tumors arise. If they do, they’re considered cancer drivers. But when you find these mutations in people in normal tissue, then what does that mean? It’s clearly not a driver.  Mutations, it turns out, needs partners to drive cancer. They need another powerful mutation and an abnormal microenviornment, to induce cells toward cancerous growth.

The mutation-riddled reality of normal skin tissue prompts us to realize that skin has ways of handling mutations and keeping cellular growth normal. As Prof. Dr. Mina Bissell, Ph.D. at Berkeley has taught us, our organs are set up for function, and that function is inextricably linked to chemical envionment of the cells and the architecture into which the cells are embedded. Most cells in an organ are differentiated, meaning they perform a specialized function. And this differentiated state isn’t merely governed by an internal molecular decision-making process within each cell. It’s a collective process, a top-down process, where the architecture dictates function. If a cancer cell wanders into another organ and survives, it falls under the spell of the architecture, the top-down process instructing the cancer cell to renormalize. Dr. Bissell taught us this many years ago. As shes says, “to understand cancer it is important to understand that the phenotype can override the genotype.” Further, “influences such as what you eat, your internal metabolism, inflammation and the sun’s rays” affect your phenotype and hence your genotype. For example, in the aforementioned study of eyelids, the sun is causing mutations, but the phenotype, the cellular chemistry and architecture, has overridden the genotype, the mutated DNA, and the cells are behaving normally without cancerous growth.

Cancer Reverts if Normal Architecture is Restored

Dr. Bissell and team, in a landmark study, found that if they took breast cancer cells and put them back into a normal microenvionment, a normal architecture, then the cancer cells reverted back to normal. Their results demonstrated that the extracellular matrix, i.e the architecture and its inherent chemistry, dictate the phenotype of mammary epithelial cells, and thus in the model system tested, the tissue phenotype was dominant over the cellular genotype.

A Glimpse at the Big Picture of DNA, Cells, Architecture and Downward Causation

In the big picture, what I’m talking about is downward causation. The architecture instructs the pieces what to do. So the cellular structure is instructing what the DNA, all of the DNA, needs to do. That’s downward causation. We inherit downward causation because life derives from the cell. Cells make cells. Put DNA in a dish, it sits there, inert. Put DNA into a cell, it will begin to function, with that function dependent on what cell it is in. The cell, of course, has architecture, and it is the cell’s architecture that sets boundary conditions, instructing the molecules in the cell, including the molecules in the DNA, what they should do. We humans arise from cells, the mother’s egg – and that egg receives architectural signaling from the fathers sperm, which delivers DNA contained in it own architecture, the centriole. In other words, that cellular architecture and that of it’s surroundings, is critical to the cell’s function, to creating life, and whether cells will become cancerous. Along with Dr. Mina Bissell, Prof. Dr. Dennis Nobel, Ph.D., at Oxford, has been a pioneer in this way of thinking.

Sun Exposure Can Damage the Architecture, Not Just DNA

Concerning sun exposure and skin cancer, what happens when UV damages the skin? Is DNA damaged? Yes. But damaged too is the architecture, incuding the constiuent proteins and lipids in the architecture. As Drs. Bissell and Ghajar have taught us, it’s the cells surrounding architecture that will determine whether a cell becomes cancerous. So the UV damage of the proteins and lipids that make the architecture of the skin will be critical to determing whether the skin is cancerous or normal.

What to Do to Protect the Skin’s Architecture

What do you need to do for your skin to be healthy and free from cancer? Normalize the architecture of the skin. How do you do this? 1. First, dose your skin with sunlight in moderation to protect the skin’s architecture. If you’re out for long, wear a sunblock. 2. Eat well. Fruits and vegetables contain many of the nutrients to needed to maintain and regenerate the skin’s architecture. 3. You can also utilyze a skin care routine that maintains and regenerates the skin’s architecture. Using a combination of NeoGenesis Recovery and Barrier Renewal Cream, for example, will help to maintain and regenerate the architecture of the dermis and epidermis. NeoGenesis Recovery will also help to optimize the skin’s natural ability to repair DNA. Also available are retinoid products and antioxidant skin care products that can also help to prevent damage and rebuild the skin’s architecture.