Commentary summary, February through July, 2024
With this August post, Cancer Ecology Commentary concludes its survey of epigenetics, planning to shift focus in upcoming posts to examine another determinant in the health of life-communities, that of biodiversity. Before leaving the world of molecular biology, however, this might be a good time to review where we’ve been so far, summarizing earlier posts over the first half of this year. The Commentary began by reviewing an essay by Pulitzer Prize winning author and medical oncologist, Siddhartha Mukherjee, using a metaphor from cosmology, dark matter, to describe gaps in our understanding of human carcinogenesis. Mukherjee wrote of how mutagenesis, acting to either activate protooncogenes causing oncogene-driven growth autonomy or reciprocally to inhibit tumor suppressor genes, the normal genetic braking mechanism guarding against unrestrained growth, proved insufficient to account for certain experimental as well as clinical studies of cancer causation. The ‘dark matte...