Biology Colloquium - The Ecology and Evolution of Cancer: The Microevolutionary Process

Armour College of Engineering students are invited to join the College of Science Department of Biology for a seminar featuring Dr. Chung-I Wu, Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at University of Chicago. Dr. Wu will present his lecture, The Ecology and Evolution of Cancer: The Microevolutionary Process.

Abstract

While tumorigenesis has been accepted as an evolutionary process, many forces may operate differently in cancers and in organisms, which evolve in vastly different time scales. Among such forces, natural selection is particularly interesting because its action might be thwarted in multicellular organisms. In this review, selection is analyzed in two stages of cancer evolution - Stage I is the evolution between tumors and normal tissues and Stage II is the evolution within tumors. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data show a low degree of convergent evolution in Stage I, where genetic changes are not extensively shared among cases . An equally important, albeit much less highlighted, result of TCGA is that the data show almost no net selection in cancer evolution. Apparently, positive selection and negative selection neatly cancel each other out, rendering each other ineffective in the absence of recombination. The efficacy of selection is even lower in Stage II where neutral non-Darwinian evolution is increasingly supported by high-density sampling studies. Since natural selection is not a strong deterministic force, cancers usually evolve divergently even in similar tissue environments.

Attendance

To ensure that your attendance at the event is properly recorded in your IIT Engineering Themes Portfolio, please take a "selfie" at the event as well as a photo of the speaker and email it to engineering@iit.edu including your A# and the name of the event in the email.

Earn Engineering Themes credit in HEALTH for attending.