BIO315H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Benign Tumor, Mutation, Metastasis
Document Summary
It is like an ecosystem or a society where cells collaborate through communication. For example they need to coordinate behaviors like rest, growth, division, differentiation, organization, death. The goal is to facilitate the survival of germ cells like somatic cells. In this case (unlike the case of competition in bacteria), there is self-sacrifice of cells (no survival of the fittest). It can be used to lose social coordination, or take on selfish behavior to grow and divide and become the founder for growing a mutant clone. This would allow it to evolve and survive better, with repeated round of mutation, competition and natural selection. Even though this is beneficial to one cell, it can jeopardize the whole ecosystem. What are two major properties of cancer: they proliferate irrespective of social controls. A tumor is neoplasm and can be benign: they invade territories reserved for other cells. This is true cancer that is malignant and are.
