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Panchin knows the idea of cancer-derived animals sounds far-fetched — so much so that, in the paper, he and his co-authors refer to them as Scandals (an acronym for “speciated by cancer development animals”). [...] According to Panchin’s three-step scenario, a Scandal would start off as a cancer, but not just any…
Cancer, we now know, is a disease caused by the uncontrolled growth of a single cell. This growth is unleashed by mutations—changes in DNA that specifically affect genes that incite unlimited cell growth. In a normal cell, powerful genetic circuits regulate cell division and cell death. In a cancer cell, these…
Most cancers are the result of "immortal" cells that have ways of evading this programmed destruction of telomere. Cancer cells use every trick in the book to gain immortality. One of their cleverer maneuvers is to keep the little caps, called telomeres, at the end of their chromosomes long. As a normal cell divides…