Breaking Tumor Dogma Canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is an unusual form of cancer because the infectious agent is not a virus or bacterium but the tumor cells themselves, which are passed from one dog to another during coitus. To explore the molecular features of the tumor and its possible origins, Murchison et al. (p. 437; see the Perspective by Parker and Ostrander) sequenced the genomes of two CTVTs and their host dogs, one from Australia and one from Brazil. Although CTVT has acquired a massive number of genomic alterations, including hundreds of times more somatic mutations than are normally found in human cancers, the tumor cell genome has remained diploid and stable. Indeed, CTVT may first have arisen in a dog that lived more than 10,000 years ago. Science 24 January 2014: Vol. 343 no. 6169 p. 350
Posted on: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 10:36:06 +0000
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