Dr Nicholas McGranahan, joint lead for the TRACERx team at UCL, explains the survival advantage to cancer of doubling its genome: If one copy of the genome has a lethal mutation, the cell could continue to survive and divide, thanks to its second copy - a genetic 'spare tyre.'
Read more on the CRUK blog: https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2020/03/05/evolution-sex-and-tracerx-how-cancers-spare-tyre-helps-it-survive/
Research paper: Interplay between whole-genome doubling and the accumulation of deleterious alterations in cancer evolution. Nature Genetics