Estimating the number of genetic mutations (hits) required for carcinogenesis based on the distribution of somatic mutations
Table 1
Number of hits estimated by the multi-combination multi-hit model range from two-eight depending on cancer type.
For the 17 cancer types with at least 200 samples, the RMSD between the distribution of somatic mutations and the probability distribution for the optimal model is less than 2.2% (top section of the table). Number of hits estimated by this somatic mutations based model is in the same range as those estimated by previous models based on incidence by age (middle section). Calculation of 95% confidence interval is described in the SI. These averages may consist of a mix of different number of hits (hi and hj) as illustrated in the bottom section of the table.