if our skin cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones, how can a bad sunburn turn into cancer YEARS down the line?

Question

if our skin cells are constantly dying and being replaced by new ones, how can a bad sunburn turn into cancer YEARS down the line?

In: 3306

Answer 1

Every time cell divides there is a risk of something going wrong, regularly things do, but the cell and our immune system deal with it by repairing the cell or by eradication. More damage you do, the more dices you roll.

Now the reason we get sunburn is that UV radiation destroys the cells internal working by destroying the dna so the cells machinery can’t read it, or by damaging the system that reads it. Cells don’t have working memory, everything they do, they take the instructions from DNA.

So a slight error in the instructions will lead to accumulation of errors. Correct errors over time this can lead to cancer.

Keep in mind that surface of our skin is dead cells, and under it there are living cells replicating.

This sane mechanism of errors in the cell leading to cancer can be caused by other things, like viruses that don’t kill the cell after or during attack, or chemicals. The key is the accumulation of errors leading to cell dividing in aggressive and uncontrolled manner. From the perspective of the cell, it is behaving correctly.