Universal Patterns of Selection in Cancer and Somatic Tissues
Paper cited by one term page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 29056346 and published in Cell; the citing page links this DOI, which is how the record was matched.
Overview
Cancer develops as a result of somatic mutation and clonal selection, but quantitative measures of selection in cancer evolution are lacking. We adapted methods from molecular evolution and applied them to 7,664 tumors across 29 cancer types. Unlike species evolution, positive selection outweighs negative selection during cancer development. On average, <1 coding base substitution/tumor is lost through negative selection, with purifying selection almost absent outside homozygous loss of essential genes. This allows exome-wide enumeration of all driver coding mutations, including outside known cancer genes. On average, tumors carry ∼4 coding substitutions under positive selection, ranging from <1/tumor in thyroid and testicular cancers to >10/tumor in endometrial and colorectal cancers. Half of driver substitutions occur in yet-to-be-discovered cancer genes. With increasing mutation burden, numbers of driver mutations increase, but not linearly. We systematically catalog cancer genes and show that genes vary extensively in what proportion of mutations are drivers versus passengers.
Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 29056346 (DOI 10.1016/j.cell.2017.09.042). Matched by DOI alone: one term page cites this DOI among its external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.
One term page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
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