New biological theory - the theory of carcino-evo-devo, its non-trivial predictions and relations to other biological theories

Abstract

The main hypothesis of carcino-evo-devo theory posits that hereditary tumors provide evolving multicellular organisms with extra cell masses for expression of evolutionarily new genes, which originate in DNA of germ cells. As a result of expression of novel genes and gene combinations, tumor cells acquire new functions and differentiate in new directions, which may lead to the origin of new cell types, tissues and organs. Several non-trivial predictions have been confirmed in our laboratory. In 1987, when only a dozen oncogenes have been described, I predicted that the number of oncogenes should correspond to the number of differentiated cell types in multicellular organism, two hundred cell types in humans at that time. Indeed, by now over two hundred different oncogenes have been described. Using computer genomics we confirmed the prediction about co-evolution of oncogenes, tumor suppressor and differentiation gene classes. Expression of evolutionarily new genes in tumors has been studied in many our publications. We described a new class of genes - tumor specifically expressed, evolutionarily novel (TSEEN) genes. The possibility of tumor participation in formation of new organs was confirmed on the model of «hoods» of goldfishes. We proved that «hoods» are benign tumors, the first example of artificial selection of tumors in the literature. Using the model of transgenic inducible tumors in fishes we have shown that human orthologs of fish TSEEN genes acquire progressive functions not encountered in fishes. This is a direct confirmation of the main hypothesis.