Biology & Philosophy

, Volume 32, Issue 2, pp 281–287 | Cite as

Metastasis as supra-cellular selection? A reply to Lean and Plutynski

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Abstract

In response to Germain (Biol Philos 27:785–810, 2012. doi: 10.1007/s10539-012-9334-2) argument that evolution by natural selection has a limited explanatory power in cancer, Lean and Plutynski (Biol Philos 31:39–57, 2016. doi: 10.1007/s10539-015-9511-1) have recently argued that many adaptations in cancer only make sense at the tumor level, and that cancer progression mirrors the major evolutionary transitions. While we agree that selection could potentially act at various levels of organization in cancers, we argue that tumor-level selection (MLS2) is unlikely to actually play a relevant role in our understanding of the somatic evolution of human cancers.

Keywords

Cancer Natural selection Metastasis Darwinian populations Multi-level selection 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.European Institute of OncologyMilanItaly
  2. 2.CNRS UMR8590, IHPST, ENSUniversité Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneParisFrance
  3. 3.UMR1170, INSERMGustave Roussy, Paris SaclayVillejuifFrance

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