Ancestral dormant genes could be driving cancer
21 May 2021
Despite decades of research, cancer remains an enigma.
Conventional wisdom holds that cancer is driven by random mutations that create aberrant cells that run amok in the body.
In a new paper published this week in the journal
BioEssays, researchers from The Australian National University and Arizona State University challenge this model.
Instead, they argue cancer is a type of genetic throwback that progresses via a series of reversions to ancestral forms of life.
In contrast with the conventional model, the researchers say the distinctive capabilities of cancer cells are not primarily generated by mutations but are pre-existent and lie dormant in normal cells.
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In spite of decades of research, cancer remains an enigma. Conventional wisdom holds that cancer is driven by random mutations that create aberrant cells that run amok in the body. In a new paper published this week in the journal BioEssays, Arizona and Australian researchers challenge this model by proposing that cancer is a type of genetic throwback, that progresses via a series of reversions to ancestral forms of life.
activating invasion and metastasis
Cancer biologists have known for a long time that the genes involved in developing cancer control cellular processes like these, and these processes are very ancient ones. Just because these processeas are ancient, however, does not mean that Davies is correct. His first line of argument is that cancer is found in virtually all multicellular organisms have cancer, which is true but basically irrelevant. Then he argues:
The evidence that cancer is an evolutionary regression goes beyond the ubiquity of the disease. Tumors, says Davies, act like single-celled organisms. Unlike mammalian cells, for example, cancer cells are not programmed to die, rendering them effectively immortal. Also, tumors can survive with very little oxygen. To Davies and his team, which includes Australian astrobiologist Charles Lineweaver and Kimberly Bussey, a bioinformatics specialist at ASU, that fact supports the idea that cancer emerged somewhere between 1 billion and 1