Re:The curious DNA circles that make treating cancer so hard
by jcims on Sunday October 03, 2021 @12:11PM
(#28738234)
> There is no sentience. It’s a trillion monkeys banging at a trillion typewriters.
I get it but the human genome has ~4^3,200,000,000 possible combinations. Even single genes have 4^1000 possible combinations...that's a number with 600 zeroes in it. That's a trillion^50. It's just odd that the mutations always seem to zero in on the right spot pretty damn quickly.
Re:The curious DNA circles that make treating cancer so hard
by djmips on Sunday October 03, 2021 @06:46AM
(#28736108)
It's a wonder we don't all have cancer. Our large functioning multi cellular bodies are a marvel.
Re:The curious DNA circles that make treating cancer so hard
by refurb on Sunday October 03, 2021 @10:22AM
(#28737354)
Evidence suggest humans “get” cancer way more frequently than we’d expect. Cells are programmed to “self-destruct” if things go wrong and our immune system is primed to destroy cells that express certain proteins associated with uncontrolled growth.
It’s really the edge cases that get through.
If anything treating cancer is more akin to antibiotic resistance. One therapy usually just selects for the cancer that is resistant, so you relapse.
And cancer cells have notoriously fragile genomes. I remember reading a paper that sequence 1,000 breast cancer samples. There were about 800 different mutations that led to the cancer. Very little similarity between patients.