Evolution can both help us understand the nature of healthy organisms and suggest creative new ways to beat cancer, says SFI External Professor John Pepper in an interview on the Santa Fe Radio Cafe.
Life on earth for most of the history of the planet has comprised single-celled organisms, Pepper says. "Generally the ones that have survived and reproduced are those that are good at pursuing their own interests -- getting the resources they need, the food, the oxygen.”
"So self interest tends to be the default in biology," he says. "But we also see all forms of cooperation, and elaborate forms of cooperation” – even in single-celled organisms. Not far up the spectrum from bacteria that form biofilms or microbes that compete and cooperate in the human gut, for example, are organisms with individuals that specialize in ways that help groups survive and reproduce.
Within many complex multi-celled species, chemical signaling among cells manages cellular reproduction, keeps it bounded (in healthy organisms), and even calls for cell suicide of some cells – such as when cells are infected with a virus, for example. It is uncontrolled reproduction of mutated and “selfish” cells competing with the immune system that lies at the heart of cancer.
If evolution can help us describe that process, it might also help us resolve it in creative ways, Pepper suggests.
Listen to the interview on the Santa Fe Radio Café (38 minutes, November 11, 2013)