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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

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 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

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 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

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

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

VIRAL DNA IN HUMAN GENOME. "Human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) proviruses comprise a significant part of the human genome, with approximately 98,000 ERV elements and fragments making up nearly 8%." Some infected human genomes at least 150,000 years ago. https://lnkd.in/dwG2wT9 View in LinkedIn

VIRUS TO EUKARYOTIC CELLS. "If DNA and DNA replication proteins originated in viruses, one can imagine that DNA replication mechanisms have been transferred from viruses to cells. Many protein phylogenies support the idea of ancient transfers of replicative proteins between cells and viruses." https://lnkd.in/dNTbYMw View in LinkedIn

VIRAL DNA INSERTED INTO HOST. "The replication cycle of a retrovirus entails the insertion ("integration") of a DNA copy of the viral genome into the nuclear genome of the host cell. Most retroviruses infect somatic cells, but occasional infection of germline cells (cells that produce eggs and sperm) can also occur. The retroviral proteins themselves have (sometimes) been co-opted to serve novel host functions, particularly in reproduction and development. " https://lnkd.in/dwG2wT9 View in LinkedIn