Figure 1. Schematic Representation of the Evolution of Cancer in a Colonic Adenoma.
The adenoma grows from a population of 106 to 109 cells which accumulate mutations that drive phenotypic changes seen in cancer cells. Blue circles symbolize adenoma cells prior to accumulating the additional mutations that are the subject of modeling, green indicates cells that have acquired additional, but an insufficient number of mutations for malignancy, and red indicates cells with the number of mutations required for the cancer phenotype.