Month: September 2022

MITOCHONDRIAL ORIGINS. "It is noteworthy that such a global replacement of cellular proteins by viral-encoded functional analogs actually occurred in the course of mitochondial evolution." https://lnkd.in/dNTbYMw View in LinkedIn

SOME VIRUSES do cause diseases, but the most interesting examples are in oncology. While the focus of this thread is not to pathologize viruses, their role in cancer is rather remarkable. Other viral diseases are also very interesting. View in LinkedIn

CANCER represents a very bizarre cellular dysfunction, where a part of the body decides to rebel, to acquire genes in order to speed that rebellion, and increasingly acts like an autonomous cellular organization with an enormously high mutation rate. View in LinkedIn

HGT AND CANCER. "The American Cancer Society reports that 15-20% of cancers worldwide and 10% of cancers in developed countries are linked to viral, bacterial, or parasitic infections. Could this be another example of HGT by proto-oncogene disruption?" (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/eBQXvvd View in LinkedIn

CANCER AND INFECTIONS. "Increasing evidence suggests a key role for the bacterial microbiota in carcinogenesis. Chronic infections contribute to carcinogenesis with approximately 18% of the global cancer burden being directly attributable to infectious agents." An important opinion paper. https://lnkd.in/dxkqA5P View in LinkedIn

HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER IN TUMORIGENESIS. "Highly pleomorphic bacteria have been regularly isolated from a variety of mammalian tumors and leukemic bloods...some highly pleomorphic bacteria express mammalian eukaryote-derived genes acquired through a process of eukaryote-to-prokaryote DNA transfer that is driven by changes in the oxygen environment." https://lnkd.in/dSMG3K7 View in LinkedIn

CANCER MUTANT CLONES. "The selection of advantageous mutations underlies tumorigenesis. The growth of a tumor is therefore a form of evolution at the somatic level, in which the population is comprised of individual cells within the tumor. Tumor growth is initiated by one or more mutations which give a cell a selective advantage. The clone derived from that cell then expands. Successive advantageous mutations occur, each followed by waves of clonal expansion." https://lnkd.in/dM_2K6d View in LinkedIn

GENE TRANSFER. "The very first transformation experiment, described in 1928, showed that dead, disease-producing bacteria could transfer their disease-producing genes to other bacteria following injection into mice." https://lnkd.in/eJ8cwgX View in LinkedIn

VIRAL DISEASES DATABASE. 128 viral diseases have been characterized. There are undoubtedly numerous more benign chronic infections yet to be found. https://lnkd.in/dhSyxZp View in LinkedIn

FLU VIRUSES. "Influenza A viruses have caused pandemics in humans during the 20th century, such as ‘‘Spanish Flu’’ caused by the H1N1 virus that killed 25–50 million people worldwide in 1918, ‘‘Asian Flu’’ by the H2N2 virus that killed 1–4 million people in 1957, and ‘‘Hong Kong Flu’’ by the H3N2 virus that killed 0.75–2 million people in 1968. The H1N1 and H3N2 viruses still continue to circulate and cause annual epidemics that kill 0.25–0.5 million people worldwide." https://lnkd.in/d4eZr87 View in LinkedIn