By: Jeff Buske Rocky Flats Gear 2011

During the event, the chromosome shatters into tens to hundreds of pieces, parts of which are patched back together, the regenerative functions of the cell creating a new genomic structure based on this incomplete DNA. 

The event could be chemical in nature but more commonly would be radiation.  Radiation comes in many forms ionizing radiation can create destructive free radicals and break chemical bonds.  Random high energy cosmic or background radiation can do damage to cellular components and DNA.  Fortunately this random radiation typically creates single DNA breaks that the body can generally repair. 

Focused beam radiation like that used by CT and airport scanners is much different from random radiation typically a single particle or gamma ray.  The collimated x-ray/gamma radiation pencil is a large number of x-rays in small area like a laser.  A laser beam below directed into a dense liquid demonstrates the radiation being absorbed in tissue.

Visualization of x-ray mm-wave radiation scattering in tissue

Even a small average dose like that of the airport scanner a large number of x-rays are delivered to a small area as shown by the bright spot.  In the case of a moving or scanned beam the tissue in this regions briefly sees a very high dose. The damage is done on a molecular level and occurs very rapidly often in less than 1 microsecond.   Statistically in this intense radiation region the chances of double DNA breaks is quite high.  If an equal amount of x-rays were delivered to a larger area the chances of double DNA breaks rapidly falls.  Soft x-rays like th used in mammograms and airport scanners are less penetrating than medical Computed Tomography (CT).  Like the laser example above soft x-rays penetrate a short distance concentrating the energy and damage to a small volume.  Thus making the dose to skin, breast and testicles 10-20 times that of the body, 

The authors, led by Philip J. Stephens of the Sanger Institute in England, found that one or more cancer-causing lesions can occur during this process. The causal factors are not known, but some possibilities include ionizing radiation, "well-known to induce dsDNA breaks," or, because most examples of this occurrence involve regions extending to the telomeres, the damage could be a result of the "breakage-fusion-bridge cycle associated with telomere attrition." Cancer formation could be related to copy number changes, with the new structure omitting tumor suppressor genes or containing an "increased copy number (amplification) of genes promoting malignant cellular processes." The study reports that this episode, termed "chromothripsis" by the authors, accounts for 2%–3% of all cancers across all tumor types, and that evidence of these events are particularly prevalent in bone cancers (up to 25%). Twenty patients with bone cancers—9 with osteosarcoma and 11 with chordoma—were screened to detect rearrangement. Five were shown to have cells which contained the hallmarks of chromothripsis.

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