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Updated: Feb 26, 2026

Discovery of Driver Genes in Colorectal HT29-derived Cancer Stem-Like Tumorspheres
Published on: July 22, 2020
Evolutionary Origins of Cancer Driver Genes and Implications for Cancer Prognosis
Xin-Yi Chu1, Ling-Han Jiang2, Xiong-Hui Zhou3
1Hubei Key Laboratory of Agricultural Bioinformatics, College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China. chuxy@webmail.hzau.edu.cn.
Abstract:
The cancer atavistic theory suggests that carcinogenesis is a reverse evolution process. It is thus of great interest to explore the evolutionary origins of cancer driver genes and the relevant mechanisms underlying the carcinogenesis. Moreover, the evolutionary features of cancer driver genes could be helpful in selecting cancer biomarkers from high-throughput data. In this study, through analyzing the cancer endogenous molecular networks, we revealed that the subnetwork originating from eukaryota could control the unlimited proliferation of cancer cells, and the subnetwork originating from eumetazoa could recapitulate the other hallmarks of cancer. In addition, investigations based on multiple datasets revealed that cancer driver genes were enriched in genes originating from eukaryota, opisthokonta, and eumetazoa. These results have important implications for enhancing the robustness of cancer prognosis models through selecting the gene signatures by the gene age information.
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