Injury prevents Ras mutant cell expansion in mosaic skin

Healthy skin is a mosaic of wild-type and mutant clones(1,2). Although injury can cooperate with mutated Ras family proteins to promote tumorigenesis(3–12), the consequences in genetically mosaic skin are unknown. Here we show that after injury, wild-type cells suppress aberrant growth induced by oncogenic Ras. Hras(G12V/+) and Kras(G12D/+) cells outcompete wild-type cells in uninjured, mosaic tissue but their expansion is prevented after injury owing to an increase in the fraction of proliferating wild-type cells. Mechanistically, we show that, unlike Hras(G12V/+) cells, wild-type cells respond to autocrine and paracrine secretion of EGFR ligands, and this differential activation of the EGFR pathway explains the competitive switch during injury repair. Inhibition of EGFR signalling via drug or genetic approaches diminishes the proportion of dividing wild-type cells after injury, leading to the expansion of Hras(G12V/+) cells. Increased proliferation of wild-type cells via constitutive loss of the cell cycle inhibitor p21 counteracts the expansion of Hras(G12V/+) cells even in the absence of injury. Thus, injury has a role in switching the competitive balance between oncogenic and wild-type cells in genetically mosaic skin.