Rates of colorectal cancer are rising sharply among adults under 45, even as they fall in older populations. NYU Grossman School of Medicine researcher Mia Petljak, PhD, and her collaborators are pursuing a provocative hypothesis: that microplastics, now found in human tissue, drinking water, and food, may be leaving detectable mutational signatures in tumor DNA. In this episode of Behind the Breakthrough: NYU Langone Researchers Tell Their Stories, Dr. Petljak and her team, including gastroenterologists Mark Pochapin, MD, and Rabia De Latour, MD, colorectal surgeon Bashar Safar, MD, and environmental health scientists Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, and Vittorio Albergamo, PhD, walk through a coordinated research effort that moves from the operating room to the lab to the genome. Their goal: to determine whether DNA can serve as a biological archive of environmental exposure, and whether those records can one day be used for personalized cancer prevention. Chapters: 00:00 Why colorec...