Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710, USA. sandra.vergara@duke.edu
There is a strong correlation between age, genomic instability, and the development of cancer. Working in yeast, Veatch et al. (2009) now propose that defects in the biogenesis of iron-sulfur clusters arising as a consequence of mitochondrial dysfunction contribute to the increase in genomic instability as cells age.