Puzzles in modern biology. II. Language, cancer and the recursive processes of evolutionary innovation

TL;DR

This paper explores how recursive hierarchical processes drive rapid evolutionary innovations, using cancer as a model to understand the emergence of complex traits like language and body forms.

Contribution

It introduces a recursive process framework to explain the swift emergence of complex biological innovations in evolution and cancer development.

Findings

Recursive processes influence innovation rates

Cancer models reveal key evolutionary mechanisms

Hierarchical systems drive rapid trait emergence

Abstract

Human language emerged abruptly. Diverse body forms evolved suddenly. Seed-bearing plants spread rapidly. How do complex evolutionary innovations arise so quickly? Resolving alternative claims remains difficult. The great events of the past happened a long time ago. Cancer provides a model to study evolutionary innovation. A tumor must evolve many novel traits to become an aggressive cancer. I use what we know or could study about cancer to describe the key processes of innovation. In general, evolutionary systems form a hierarchy of recursive processes. Those recursive processes determine the rates at which innovations are generated, spread and transmitted. I relate the recursive processes to abrupt evolutionary innovation.