Hypothesis: Phylogenetic Diseases of the Nervous System

Abstract

SUMMARYA few human diseases may be viewed from a phylogenetic perspective. Some metabolic or degenerative diseases selectively affect recently evolved or exclusively mammalian structures of the brain and spare the older structures. Examples include Krabbe’s leukodystrophy, olivopontocerebellar atrophy, Friedreich’s ataxia, Pick’s disease, and Leber’s optic atrophy. Some pathologic conditions in man are similar to normal anatomy in other species, although the mechanisms may differ. Congenital muscle fiber-type disproportion in rodents, Dandy-Walker cyst in birds, and agenesis of the corpus callosum in marsupials are representative of this category. Loss of basal dendritic spines from pyramidal cells in Pick’s disease is reminiscent of certain large neurons normally found in the cortex of reptiles. Changes in metabolism in the evolution of mammals in general and of man in particular may explain some aspects of’phylogenetic diseases’. Some potential examples are the shift from predominantly phospholipids to galactolipids in myelin composition as mammals evolved, and the greater toxicity of cyanide and other poisons of oxidative metabolism in mammals than in other vertebrates because of less reliance on anaerobic metabolism as an alternative energy source.

Study of Clinical Survival and Gene Expression in a Sample of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma by Parsimony Phylogenetic Analysis

“…In particular, lack of targeted molecular agents for the significantly altered genes in PDAC call into question the effectiveness of some of the applied methods of data analysis, and indicate the importance of using approaches that are suitable for dealing with patient heterogeneity and the subtyping of patient population (Boeck et al, 2013;Kindler et al, 2011;Moore et al, 2007;Van Cutsem et al, 2004. Evolution-based biomedical constructs, including parsimony phylogenetics, have been shown to be a suitable tool for dealing with heterogeneous and highdimensional data such as gene expression microarray (AbuAsab et al, 2008b(AbuAsab et al, , 2011Abu-Asab et al, 2013;Sarnat and Netsky, 1984;Wiley, 1981).…”

“…The poor prognosis and/or delayed diagnosis have been assigned primarily to the genomic diversity and/or heterogeneity of PDAC, which hinder the discovery of primary biomarker targets. Parsimony phylogenetics is an evolutionary analytical method that has been applied to mass spectrometry data of cancer (Abu-Asab et al, 2006, gene expression of various diseases (Abu-Asab et al, 2008aAzzone, 1996;Sarnat and Netsky, 1984), vaccine analysis (Abu-Asab et al, 2010), and systematics biology of taxa (Wiley and Lieberman, 2011). Utilization of parsimony phylogenetics uncovers clonal (driver) and nonclonal (nonexpanded or passenger) aberrations (Abu-Asab et al, 2013), which are needed for the detection of biomarkers.…”

Endometriosis Gene Expression Heterogeneity and Biosignature: A Phylogenetic Analysis

“…Sarnat and Netsky first put forth the concept of disease etiology by evolutionary criteria in 1984 [14] whereby disease is viewed as an accumulation of genetic mutations. In this study, we sought to identify a genomic biosignature(s) for endometriosis using a newly developed evolution-based parsimony phylogenetics approach for gene expression microarrays data [15, 16] of endometriosis patients in order to stratify individual cases based on the molecular change, model the disease based on the level of patients' gene expression profiles, and identify affected molecular pathways involved in the disease process.…”

Evolutionary medicine: A meaningful connection between omics, disease, and treatment

“…However, only recently there are new calls for the need of evolution in medicine in order to provide explanations for drug resistance in HIV and bacterial strains, autoimmune and degenerative diseases, as well as cancer typing and treatment [1][2][3]. Cancer development, progression, and maintenance are all evolutionary processes; they mirror similar evolutionary processes at the cellular and population levels in that they all involve genetic modifications, selective pressure, and clonal propagation [2,4,5]. Therefore, evolution-compatible methods of analysis have a potentially useful role in cancer studies and diagnosis as well [2,6,7].…”

“…One of the earliest studies of disease etiology by evolutionary criteria was that of Sarnat and Netsky [5]. They described as "phylogenetic diseases" some of the degenerative and metabolic diseases that occurred in the derived structures of the mammalian brain.…”