• Question: can plants get cancer?

    Asked by to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Amar Joshi

      Amar Joshi answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Hi Puneet,

      I don’t think plants can get cancer like we recognise it in humans and animals. Two hallmarks of cancer are uncontrolled cellular growth (a tumor) and subsequent spreading of the tumour around the body (metastatic tumours).

      In plants, they can get regions of uncontrolled cell growth (like tumours) but there is no way for them to spread around the plant. So it is not called cancer.

      Hope that helps!

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Not like humans do. Plants can grow tumours but these are caused by infective agents such as bacteria, viruses and fungi. Plants tumours do not spread round the plant, as plant cells have a cell wall holding cells in place. So it’s not cancer as we understand it

    • Photo: Anastasia Wass

      Anastasia Wass answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Like the others said plants don’t get cancer in the same way as humans!

    • Photo: Leah Fitzsimmons

      Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Plants – like anything else made up of a lot of growing cells – can get tumours, and just like in humans, this involves a faulty cell avoiding the organism’s (in this case a plant) normal defenses and growing uncontrollably.
      You can see some pictures of plant tumours here:
      http://www.nature.com/nrc/journal/v10/n11/fig_tab/nrc2942_F1.html
      Interestingly, like in humans, plant tumours can be caused by viruses and by important genes going wrong, and some genes that are important in human cancer are also found to go wrong in plants that get tumours.
      The others are also right that there are big differences between tumours in humans and in plants, one of the big reasons for this is thought to be because plant cells have a hard outer wall, whereas human and animal cells have a soft membrane around them. This is probably why plant tumours can’t spread.

    • Photo: Matthew Lam

      Matthew Lam answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      Yes I’m fairly sure plants can get tumours but it’s not the disease ‘cancer’ which humans get.

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