Study Highlights Evolutionary Aspect of Tumour Development
the Crick said: “Cancers are constantly changing over time, so it’s important to recognise that a sample taken from a tumour refl ects a single point in time and the cancer will continue to evolve after this. They can grow into a patchwork with sections driven by different mutations and evolutionary pressures.
“Understanding more about the evolution of subclones, why they develop in one direction over another, as well as how common they are, could help doctors better predict the levels of and types of variation likely to be present in a specifi c cancer type.”
Research in this area has already shown that understanding this genetic diversity can be harnessed to predict survival or relapse, which could help doctors and patients make important treatment decisions.*
The researchers have created an open-access resource that documents the genetic variation they found in the subclones. Their computational methods are also available for others to analyse cancer genomes.
Patchwork tumours prevalent across multiple cancer types (Credit Francis Crick Institute)
As part of an international consortium researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have analysed the whole genomes of tumour samples from over 2,600 patients with different types of cancer, identifying a high prevalence of genetic diversity within individual tumours, which they further characterised. This variation is a challenge for doctors as a treatment that works for one group of genetically related tumour cells, or subclones, may not be effective against another. And certain subclones can initiate tumour spread or drug resistance at different points during the course of the disease.
From analysis of the whole-genomes of 2,658 cancer samples, spanning 38 types of cancer, the scientists found that 95% of samples contain at least one identifi able subclone.
Peter Van Loo, author and group leader of the Cancer Genomics Laboratory at
Maxime Tarabichi, author and postdoc in the Cancer Genomics Laboratory at the Crick said: “We combined a number of high-quality computational methods to analyse these complex genetic data. Reassuringly, when we put the methods together in different ways and put them through independent simulations, the results always gave fi ndings that fi t the same story.”
This work was carried by the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes consortium, including the Francis Crick Institute, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Big Data Institute at University of Oxford, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, University of Toronto, Vector Institute, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Cancer Research UK, University of Leuven, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Oxford NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and others.
Published in Cell
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Opposed Thumb Structure revealed by Jurassic Flying Reptile models and tell how the opposed thumb articulates with the other fi nger bones.
An international team of researchers from China, Brazil, UK, Denmark and Japan have described a new Jurassic pterosaur Kunpengopterus antipollicatus, as having the oldest true opposed thumb - a novel structure previously not known in pterosaurs.
Discovered in the Tiaojishan Formation of Liaoning, China, the new 160-million year old species dubbed ‘Monkeydactyl’, is a small-bodied darwinopteran pterosaur with an estimated wingspan of 85 cm. Most importantly, the specimen was preserved with an opposed pollex (“thumb”) on both hands.
The research team scanned the fossil of K. antipollicatus using micro- computed tomography (micro-CT), a technique making use of X-ray to image an object. By studying its forelimb morphology and musculature, they suggest that K. antipollicatus could have used its hand for grasping, which is likely an adaptation for arboreal life.
In order to test the arboreal interpretation, the team analysed K. antipollicatus and other pterosaurs using a set of anatomical characters related to arboreal adaptation. The results support K. antipollicatus as an arboreal species, but not the other pterosaurs from the same ecosystem. This suggests niche- partitioning among these pterosaurs and provides the fi rst quantitative evidence that at least some darwinopteran pterosaurs were arboreal.
Fion Waisum Ma, co-author of the study and PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham, said: “The fi ngers of ‘Monkeydactyl’ are tiny and partly embedded in the slab. Thanks to micro-CT scanning, we could see through the rocks, create digital
“This is an interesting discovery. It provides the earliest evidence of a true opposed thumb and it is from a pterosaur - which wasn’t known for having an opposed thumb’ she added.
Xuanyu Zhou from China University of Geosciences who led the study commented: “Tiaojishan palaeoforest is home to many organisms, including three genera of darwinopteran pterosaurs. Our results show that K. antipollicatus has occupied a different niche from Darwinopterus and Wukongopterus, which has likely minimised competition among these pterosaurs.”
Rodrigo V. Pêgas from Federal University of ABC, in Sao Bernardo, Brazil, said: “Darwinopterans are a group of pterosaurs from the Jurassic of China and Europe, named after Darwin due to their unique transitional anatomy that has revealed how evolution affected the anatomy of pterosaurs throughout time.
“On top of that, a particular darwinopteran fossil has been preserved with two associated eggs, revealing clues to pterosaur reproduction. They’ve always been considered precious fossils for these reasons and it is impressive that new darwinopteran species continue to surprise us.”
Published in Current Biology.
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