I'm a physicist writing a proposal that has to do with cancer as a disease driven by evolutionary selection. As far as I understand, all tumors start with a single precursor (single cell or group of cells), and the other cells derive from this precursor by cycles of alterations and selection processes.
Reading recent articles, such as this, I learned that the derived cells include both clones
and subclones
. Since I'm not sure I understood things correctly, I have a few questions on the difference between the two words:
- Is it OK to call
clones
the cells derived from the precursors? - When should I use
subclones
? - In the case of heterogeneity, is it fine to call
clonal population
a group of clones with the same characteristics?