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MOS, aneuploidy and the ploidy cycle of cancer cells

Oncogene volume 29, pages 5447–5451 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

After DNA or spindle damage, p53-defective tumor cells undergo a complex cycle of reversible polyploidy. How this process occurs and more importantly, why, has recently become the focus of several research groups, prompting this review in which we discuss two related phenomena that accompany the reversible polyploidy of tumor cells: the induction of meiosis genes such as MOS and the decrease in genomic instability observed during the reversion from polyploidy to para-diploidy. The reversible polyploidy likely provides the means through which the balance between increased chromosome instability (CIN), driving genetic variation and decreased CIN, necessary for perpetuating these malignant clones, is maintained. These concepts are integrated with recent findings that many meiotic and self-renewal genes become activated during reversible polyploidy and lead us to the hypothesis that tumor cell immortality may be achieved through germline-like transmission.

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Abbreviations

ETC:

endopolyploid tumor cells

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Acknowledgements

We thank many collaborators and colleagues for helpful discussions, in particular Kirsten Walen, Helmut Zacharias, Evgenia Zybina and Dmitry Perminov and apologize to those authors not cited here due to space restrictions.

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  1. Latvian Biomedicine Research and Study Centre, Riga, Latvia

    J Erenpreisa

  2. Cancer Sciences Division, Tenovus Laboratory, Southampton University School of Medicine, General Hospital, Southampton, UK

    M S Cragg

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Correspondence to J Erenpreisa or M S Cragg.

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Erenpreisa, J., Cragg, M. MOS, aneuploidy and the ploidy cycle of cancer cells. Oncogene 29, 5447–5451 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/onc.2010.310

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