Abstract
This review explores the evolutionary interaction and co-development between immune system and somatic evolution. Over immense durations, continuous interactions between microbes, aberrant somatic cells, including malignant cells, and the immune system have successively shaped the evolutionary development of the immune system, somatic cells and microorganisms through continuous adaptive symbiotic processes of progressive immunological and somatic change providing what we observe today. The immune system is powerful enough to remove cancer and induce long-term cures. Our knowledge of how this occurs is just emerging. It is less clear why the immune system would detect cancer cells, when it is usually focused on combatting infection. Here we show the connections between immunity, infection and cancer, by searching back in time hundreds of millions of years and more to when multi-cellular organisms first began, and the immune system eventually evolved into the truly brilliant and efficient protective mechanism, the importance of which we are just beginning to now understand. What we do know is that comprehending these points will likely lead to more effective cancer therapies.
Highlights
Introduction and overviewIt often goes unappreciated that the adaptive immune system developed hundreds of millions of years ago, and has evolved into a truly efficient protective mechanism, the importance of which we are just beginning to understand in science and medicine
If the antigen can be acutely removed from the system, the immune system returns to steady basal state via homeostatic mechanisms
Concluding remarks and implications knowledge has developed deeply concerning the immune system and cancer immunology, our contemporary understanding needs to be placed in evolutionary perspective
Summary
Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article. How the genome monitors itself and evolves Somatic changes of organisms occur generally at a gradual pace as part of the slow, but effective, evolutionary process through such mechanisms as random mutation, natural selection and viral infection. Many organisms can expand rapidly, possess mechanisms for evasion of host defences, and can mutate at a rate that far outpaces somatic evolutionary change via much faster division/reproduction rates This may explain the immune system’s evolved ability to match these rapid microbial mutational rates to more effectively neutralize them via innate mechanisms, antibody production and cellular responses. To oppose mutated, infected and otherwise aberrant cells, the immune system has a number of adaptive and protective mechanisms These include somatic hypermutation genes for generation of hypervariable region binding domains for antibody molecules by plasma (B-) cells, and for hypervariable T-cell surface receptors by T-cells for rapid response to antigen exposure.
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