“Cancer across the Tree of Life: Cooperation and Cheating in Multicellularity”, C. Athena Aktipis, Amy M. Boddy, Gunther Jansen, Urszula Hibner, Michael E. Hochberg, Carlo C. Maley, Gerald S. Wilkinson2015-07-19 (biology, natural selection; backlinks)⁠:

[Group selection perspective on cancer eg. somatic evolution] Multicellularity is characterized by cooperation among cells for the development, maintenance and reproduction of the multicellular organism. Cancer can be viewed as cheating within this cooperative multicellular system. Complex multicellularity, and the cooperation underlying it, has evolved independently multiple times.

We review the existing literature on cancer and cancer-like phenomena across life, not only focusing on complex multicellularity but also reviewing cancer-like phenomena across the tree of life more broadly. We find that cancer is characterized by a breakdown of the central features of cooperation that characterize multicellularity, including cheating in proliferation inhibition, cell death, division of labour, resource allocation and extracellular environment maintenance (which we term the 5 foundations of multicellularity): (1) inhibiting cell proliferation, (2) regulation of cell death, (3) division of labour, (4) resource transport and (5) creation and maintenance of the extracellular environment. [The dark cancer inversions: uncontrolled proliferation, inappropriate cell survival, disregulated differentiation, resource monopolization, environmental degradation leading to the ‘cancer degradome’.]

Cheating on division of labour, exhibited by a lack of differentiation and disorganized cell masses, has been observed in all forms of multicellularity. This suggests that deregulation of differentiation is a fundamental and universal aspect of carcinogenesis that may be underappreciated in cancer biology.

Understanding cancer as a breakdown of multicellular cooperation provides novel insights into cancer hallmarks and suggests a set of assays and biomarkers that can be applied across species and characterize the fundamental requirements for generating a cancer.

See Also:

• De novo evolution of macroscopic multicellularity

• The reserve-capacity hypothesis: evolutionary origins and modern implications of the trade-off between tumor-suppression and tissue-repair

• Emergent multilevel selection in a simple spatial model of the evolution of altruism

• Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of parasites

• Understanding the Odd Science of Aging

• Somatic evolution and global expansion of an ancient transmissible cancer lineage

• PATH: Defining ancestry, heritability and plasticity of cellular phenotypes in somatic evolution

• Erosion of the Epigenetic Landscape and Loss of Cellular Identity as a Cause of Aging in Mammals

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