Myxozoa: Cancer as a devolved parasite
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I learned recently about myxozoa, a type of parasite that infects fish. At first scientists thought they were a type of amoeba or fungus, but their DNA reveals they are most closely related to jellyfish.
Their unique difference is that their cells contain no mitochondria. In fact, they are the only known animal species to lack mitochondria, implying they must have had them in the past, and at some point they atrophied and eventually were totally lost.
The leading theory on how they evolved is called SCANDAL: Speciation by Cancer Development in Animals. The theory is these parasites did not evolve from jellyfish themselves, but from cancerous tumors on jellyfish, which split off and developed the ability to parasitize other organisms.
Ray Peat and others in the bioenergetic space have spoken about how, via the Warburg Effect, cancerous tumors represent a "devolution" to a lower form of pre-mitochondrial life based on glycolysis, which can only grow unchecked without differentiation like bacterial colonies, and which must be parasitic to the organism by nature. I think the existence of myxozoa, as obligate parasites devolved from animal life with atrophied mitochondria, represents an interesting confirmation of this theory.
This also suggests that pathogens can be produced from higher lifeforms by degenerative processes, which seems to support Peat's idea that viruses are exosomes produced by lifeforms under stress.
