Cancer Ecology Commentary

  In an earlier post from last month, we examined how phenotypic diversity of an organism, necessary for enhancing that organism’s adaptability to changes occurring in its prevailing environment could be better understood from the perspective of that organism representing a holobiont, a meta-organism of both the host together with the commensal microorganisms resident in the host. This expanded view allowed the incorporation of certain microbial genes along with the host genome in accounting for some phenotypic trait variation for which the host genome alone cannot account. An important example of these interactions comes from the study microorganism-derived immune modulation in cancer and the ability of those microorganisms to alter the cancer microenvironment. Mutagenic Retrohoming Microorganisms of the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract are also able to quickly adapt   some of their own phenotypic characteristics through a process that has been termed mutagenic retrohoming...