Somatic Evolution in Cancer - Glossary

Glossary

Mapping between common terms from cancer biology and evolutionary biology

• Driver mutation = a mutation that gives a selective advantage to a clone in its microenvironment, through either increasing its survival or reproduction. Driver mutations tend to cause clonal expansions.
• Passenger mutation = a mutation that has no effect on the fitness of a clone but may be associated with a clonal expansion because it occurs in the same genome with a driver mutation. This is known as a hitchhiker in evolutionary biology.
• Clone = a set of cells that all descend from a common ancestor cell. A clone is usually distinguished through inheritance of a distinctive genetic lesion (mutation) that occurred in the ancestor cell.
• Neoplastic progression = the somatic evolutionary process by which normal tissue changes into malignant (cancerous) tissue.