We are the Jones Group at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, exploring how normal cells evolve as they acquire mutations through ageing and environmental exposures, and how these changes set the stage for cancer.
Our research combines deep sequencing, gene editing, 3D tissue culture, live imaging, single-cell analysis, and quantitative modelling to uncover how mutant cells compete, persist, or are eliminated within normal tissues such as the skin and oesophagus.
We focus on three key areas:
- 🧬 Mutations in normal tissues – mapping how mutations accumulate with age, lifestyle, and environmental factors.
- ⚖️ Competitive fitness of mutant cells – identifying mutations that give cells an advantage and exploring ways to selectively remove them.
- 🔬 Earliest stages of tumour development – visualising how micro-tumours emerge, compete, and sometimes regress before progressing to cancer.
By understanding these Darwinian-like evolutionary processes, we aim to develop strategies that redirect selection pressures to reduce harmful mutations and ultimately prevent cancer before it starts.
This GitHub organisation hosts our computational tools, analysis pipelines, additional publication support files and models that support our mission to decode the evolutionary dynamics of normal and pre-cancerous tissues.