Re:Why cancer cells waste so much energy
by lisper on Friday January 15, 2021 @03:27PM
(#25795928)
> I assume no such thing.
You certainly do:
"This theory, from the way you've stated it, would require preservation of inactive genes for hundreds of millions of years, only to spring back to action in cancer cells."
This is only true if the genes for being single-celled are inactive in multi-celled creatures and would need to be re-actived to revert to being single-celled. But this is not the case. Milti-cellularity is a functional layer built on top of single-cellularity, so to revert to being single-celled you have to deactivate currently active genes, not activate inactive ones.
You certainly do:
"This theory, from the way you've stated it, would require preservation of inactive genes for hundreds of millions of years, only to spring back to action in cancer cells."
This is only true if the genes for being single-celled are inactive in multi-celled creatures and would need to be re-actived to revert to being single-celled. But this is not the case. Milti-cellularity is a functional layer built on top of single-cellularity, so to revert to being single-celled you have to deactivate currently active genes, not activate inactive ones.