LAUSR

Somatic mutations in cancer genomes can be caused by many different mutational processes, each of which produce distinctive patterns termed “mutational signatures”. Although cancer researchers can now recognize a large number of mutational signatures, exactly how these patterns arise remains unknown. Nik-Zainal and colleagues tackled this problem using a CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing screen to knock out components of the DNA mismatch repair machinery and learn their unique mutational patterns. Based on their data, the authors developed MMRDetect, a computational algorithm to classify the different DNA repair deficiencies and predict tumour responsiveness to immunotherapy.