> activation of retro viruses during embryonic development.
Citation on this? As far as I know (am writing a phd thesis on development++),
there's nothing like "virus activation". Viral elements (mostly transposons) are big evolutionary players
but are usually actively repressed by DNA methylation (in eucaryots).
> Which might be why many cancers, seem, to me, to look like distinct entities, like the tissue has suddenly switched to a different functional mode.
I don't 100% understand your comments about viruses here, but related to this, we don't need to imagine some virus orchestrating such a thing (besides, as far as I know they are way too simple to drive complex eucaryot gene regulation), but rather gene regulatory networks which if they get unbalanced can lead to significant changes in morphology.
Citation on this? As far as I know (am writing a phd thesis on development++), there's nothing like "virus activation". Viral elements (mostly transposons) are big evolutionary players but are usually actively repressed by DNA methylation (in eucaryots).
> Which might be why many cancers, seem, to me, to look like distinct entities, like the tissue has suddenly switched to a different functional mode.
I don't 100% understand your comments about viruses here, but related to this, we don't need to imagine some virus orchestrating such a thing (besides, as far as I know they are way too simple to drive complex eucaryot gene regulation), but rather gene regulatory networks which if they get unbalanced can lead to significant changes in morphology.
<edit> some spelling