Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California, United States of America.
PLoS Biol. 2012;10(4):e1001296. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001296. Epub 2012 Apr 3.
Recent cancer studies emphasize that genetic and heritable epigenetic changes drive the evolutionary rate of cancer progression and drug resistance. We discuss the ways in which nonheritable aspects of cellular variability may significantly increase evolutionary rate. Nonheritable variability arises by stochastic fluctuations in cells and by physiological responses of cells to the environment. New approaches to drug design may be required to control nonheritable variability and the evolution of resistance to chemotherapy.
最近的癌症研究强调,遗传和可遗传的表观遗传变化推动了癌症进展和耐药性的进化速度。我们讨论了细胞变异性的非遗传方面如何显著增加进化速度。非遗传变异性是由细胞的随机波动和细胞对环境的生理反应引起的。可能需要新的药物设计方法来控制非遗传变异性和化疗耐药性的演变。