Pleomorphic mammalian tumor-derived bacteria self-organize as multicellular mammalian eukaryotic-like organisms: morphogenetic properties in vitro, possible origins, and possible roles in mammalian `tumor ecologies'

Abstract 

Highly pleomorphic bacteria have regularly been isolated from mammalian tumors and leukemic bloods. Here, it is shown that highly pleomorphic, cell-wall deficient bacteria derived from a mammalian tumor self-organize in vitro into mammalian tissue-like morphogenetic patterns consisting of multicellular tissue-like sheets and capillary-like networks. It is proposed that these pleomorphic mammalian tumor-derived (MTD) bacteria, during morphogenesis, express mammalian tissue morphogenesis-related genes that were acquired through eukaryote-to-prokaryote DNA transfer. Similar pleomorphic MTD bacteria might play important roles as symbiotic multicellular mammalian eukaryotic-like organisms in mammalian `tumor ecologies' that include malignant and nonmalignant mammalian eukaryotic cells. From a mammalian tumor ecology perspective, eradication of tumors in some mammalian hosts may depend upon the elimination of pleomorphic MTD bacteria self-organized as symbiotic multicellular mammalian eukaryotic-like organisms. Further investigations of the extraordinary mammalian eukaryotic-like multicellularity of these bacteria may yield fundamental insights into the evolution of multicellularity and multicellular development and may challenge basic assumptions regarding cellular evolution.