Recently read something about how a few bad sunburns when you’re young can cause a large increase in cancer later in your life. How can you develop cancer several decades after you’re burnt if your skin cells are constantly dying, falling off, and regrowing?
In: Biology
First of all the top layer of the skin is constantly replaced, but the lower layers aren’t.
This is why tattoos are permanent, and why superficial burns can heal completely but deeper burns won’t.
Also, the skin regenerates itself by dividing the cells.
When a call divides it makes a copy of itself. If a cell’s DNA is damaged then the new cells that come from that cell will have the same damaged DNA from then on, until that cell line dies.
The UV rays damage DNA. Most of the time the DNA can be fixed or the cell dies. Some of the damage can’t be fixed and the cell doesn’t die, so any further copies of this cell will contain the damaged DNA.
And sometimes this damaged DNA causes the cells to divide forever and become cancer.
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