EEB Tuesday Seminar - 9/8/2009

Held every Tuesday from 12:30-1:45pm in Biological Sciences West Building, Room 219 (building location map)

Room: BSW 219

Speaker: Dr. John Pepper

Title: Multilevel Selection and the First General Theory of Cancer

Abstract:

Multilevel selection theory applies to many important problems in biology, including applications outside the traditional boundaries of evolutionary biology. I and my colleagues have applied multilevel selection theory to developing and testing the first general theory for cancer biology. The key characteristics of cancer are shaped by two distinct but interacting levels of selection: A history of selection among individuals has shaped human defenses against, and vulnerabilities to, cancer. On a smaller scale, within each body and each life span, somatic cells also meet the conditions for evolution by Darwinian selection: cell reproduction with heritable variation that affects cell survival and replication. Consequently, somatic selection among cells favors the dismantling of normal genetic constraints on cell proliferation and survival. This eventually results in uncontrolled cell proliferation followed by malignant tissue invasion. By illuminating its underlying causal dynamics, evolutionary theory provides a general framework for understanding many aspects of cancer, Several conceptual and analytical tools from evolutionary biology can be applied directly to cancer biology, including somatic phylogenetic reconstruction of cancer cells, and the analysis of cellular adaptation and convergent evolution. This theory has important implications both for cancer research and for cancer medicine.

Biography: