table of contents 
Comparative oncology is a branch of comparative pathology that is relatively new …
|
The biological phenomena whose mechanisms are,
at present, explored and largely understood, certainly
had their own evolution. Searching for the origin and
details of the evolution of "advanced solutions" as
well as selection pressures that might justify their
emergence and existence, we often fail to see that
many such phenomena are, in fact, co-evolutionary byproducts
of "evolutionary innovations". In other
words, the evolutionary emergence of "advanced
solutions" is sometimes, if not always, accompanied
by certain by-products and by the co-evolution of
compensatory mechanisms acting as a counterbalance
to these. An example of the evolution of "advanced
solutions" is the evolution of adaptive immunity, and
co-evolution of auto-immunity and alloimmunity.
Alongside with the diversification of the mechanisms
of adaptive immunity, auto-immunity and
alloimmunity gain attribute of the evolutionary byproducts
and become sources of selection pressure. To
that effect, alloimmunity could be a source of very
strong selection pressure in mammals, simply because
it is directly connected with the reproductive efficacy.
At the same time, new forms of selection pressure that
are connected with adaptive immunity gave rise to
new mechanisms controlling killer machinery of the
immune system. Finally, the last in a line of byproducts
in the processes of evolutionary "modelling"
and "re-modelling" of vertebrate immune system can
be called the failure of anti-tumor immunity.
rating: 1.00 from 1 votes | updated on: 1 Mar 2009 | views: 964 |
|
Answers to all your Biology Questions
