Abstract
Most presentations in this meeting take as an article of faith that knowledge of the amount and kinds of human chemical exposure are of value in determining the causes of human cancer. It can be argued however that while such knowledge may be valuable, the presence of a chemical does not prove that it has significantly contributed to genetic change in general or to cancer mutations specifically. To make this link, analytical chemistry must be joined to analytical genetics. As a potential means to create this joining, the concepts and present practices of mutational spectrometry will be reviewed. Emphasis will be restricted to methods which allow genetic measurements in humans such as denaturing gradient separations or the newly developed mismatch amplification mutation assay (MAMA) technology. Experiments aimed at determining when in a person’s lifetime oncomutations occur will also be discussed.
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Thilly, W.G. (1993). Measurement of Mutation Spectra as a Molecular Dosimeter. In: Travis, C.C. (eds) Use of Biomarkers in Assessing Health and Environmental Impacts of Chemical Pollutants. NATO ASI Series, vol 250. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2052-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2052-2_5
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