# OnCo record atavistic-theory-of-cancer (term). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)". Whole corpus: https://onco.cc/api/v1/onco.nt
@prefix schema: <https://schema.org/> .
@prefix onco: <https://onco.cc/ns#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

<https://onco.cc/terms/atavistic-theory-of-cancer/>
  a schema:DefinedTerm ;
  onco:kind "term" ;
  schema:identifier "atavistic-theory-of-cancer" ;
  schema:name "Atavistic theory: cancer as a reversion to an ancient programme"@en ;
  schema:alternateName "atavistic model of cancer"@en, "atavism theory"@en, "cancer as Metazoa 1.0"@en, "ancestral programme theory"@en, "de-repression of a default survival programme"@en, "phylostratigraphy of cancer"@en ;
  schema:description "Physicist Paul Davies and astrobiologist Charles Lineweaver proposed in 2011 that cancer is not a new invention by each tumour but the re-awakening of an ancient survival toolkit from the earliest multicellular life, about a billion years old, which is why every cancer behaves in the same few ways. Gene-age studies give it some support; whether it predicts anything a doctor can use is unproven."@en ;
  schema:url <https://onco.cc/terms/atavistic-theory-of-cancer/> ;
  schema:dateModified "2026-09-17"^^xsd:date ;
  schema:sameAs <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism> ;
  schema:citation <https://doi.org/10.1088/1478-3975/8/1/015001>, <https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201100049>, <https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201400070>, <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1617743114>, <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706990114>, <https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0219> ;
  onco:tag "theory" ;
  onco:related <https://onco.cc/pathways/theories-of-cancer/>, <https://onco.cc/terms/metabolic-theory-of-cancer/>, <https://onco.cc/terms/somatic-mutation-theory/>, <https://onco.cc/terms/clonal-evolution-theory/>, <https://onco.cc/terms/hallmarks-synthesis/>, <https://onco.cc/pathways/cancer-metabolism/>, <https://onco.cc/terms/warburg-effect/>, <https://onco.cc/technologies/mathematical-oncology/> ;
  onco:technologies <https://onco.cc/technologies/evolutionary-game-theory-cancer/> ;
  onco:pathways <https://onco.cc/pathways/cancer-metabolism/> ;
  onco:keyPapers <https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-vincent-bioessays/>, <https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-lineweaver-bioessays/>, <https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-trigos-proc-natl-acad-sci-u-s-a/>, <https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-bussey-proc-natl-acad-sci-u-s-a/>, <https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-davies-phys-biol/>, <https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-aktipis-philos-trans-r-soc-lond-b-biol-sci/> .