Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 14, 2025

Characterizing Mutational Load and Clonal Composition of Human Blood
Published on: July 11, 2019
Clonal evolution driven by superdriver mutations
Patrick Grossmann1, Simona Cristea2,3,4, Niko Beerenwinkel5,6
1Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zurich, Mattenstrasse 26, 4058, Basel, Switzerland.
Background:
Tumors are widely recognized to progress through clonal evolution by sequentially acquiring selectively advantageous genetic alterations that significantly contribute to tumorigenesis and thus are termned drivers. Some cancer drivers, such as TP53 point mutation or EGFR copy number gain, provide exceptional fitness gains, which, in time, can be sufficient to trigger the onset of cancer with little or no contribution from additional genetic alterations. These key alterations are called superdrivers.
Results:
In this study, we employ a Wright-Fisher model to study the interplay between drivers and superdrivers in tumor progression. We demonstrate that the resulting evolutionary dynamics follow global clonal expansions of superdrivers with periodic clonal expansions of drivers. We find that the waiting time to the accumulation of a set of superdrivers and drivers in the tumor cell population can be approximated by the sum of the individual waiting times.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that superdriver dynamics dominate over driver dynamics in tumorigenesis. Furthermore, our model allows studying the interplay between superdriver and driver mutations both empirically and theoretically.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
T Cell Activation and Clonal Selection
Naive T cells that have not yet encountered an antigen express two primary CD...
Mutation, Gene Flow, and Genetic Drift
Gene Duplication and Divergence
The duplicated copies of the gene are called Paralogs. Paralogs with similar sequences and functions form a gene family. Across several species, a large number of gene families are...
Viral Mutations
Conservative Site-specific Recombination and Phase Variation
The recognition sites for Cre recombinase called LoxP...
Spontaneous and Induced Mutations

