These days, redheads the world over are acutely aware of the dangers they run by exposing themselves to the sun. In exchange for their fiery locks, they are unfortunately subject to a 40% increase in the risk of being diagnosed with melanoma, the most aggressive type of skin cancer. So far, our understanding of why that is has been extremely limited. We have known for a long time that the increased cancer risk is linked to a specific variation of the MC1R gene, which is also responsible for the freckles and pale skin tone that is usually associated with red
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