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Linking Gulf War Illness to Genome Instability, Somatic Evolution, and Complex Adaptive Systems

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Putting Systems and Complexity Sciences Into Practice

Abstract

Gulf War illness (GWI) is a chronic multi-symptom disorder impacting one-third of veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. Despite a rapid accumulation of experimental data from various fields, there is no commonly accepted mechanism of this condition. Both the complex etiology and diverse symptoms of GWI have complicated its clinical diagnoses and treatments. By comparing GWI to many other common and complex diseases, we realized that a better way to study GWI is to consider it as a complex adaptive system that follows the principles of somatic evolution. In this presentation, we share our story of identifying the “Gulf War-specific-stress-induced” and “genome instability-mediated” common mechanisms of GWI. Our analyses are useful for explaining the linkage between the diverse features of GWI and elevated genome instability, which further suggest a possible framework of genome alteration-mediated somatic evolution to understand common and complex diseases in general.

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Acknowledgements

This article is part of a series of studies entitled “The mechanisms of somatic cell and organismal evolution.” This work was supported by a grant from the DOD (GW093028).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, and Department of Pathology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, 3226 Scott Hall, 540 E. Canfield, Detroit, MI, 48201, USA

    Henry H. Heng

  2. Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Wayne State University School of Medicine, 3226 Scott Hall, 540 E. Canfield, Detroit, MI, 48201, USA

    Guo Liu & Sarah Regan

  3. The Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Internal Medicine, Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Michigan, 1500 East Medical Drive, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Christine J. Ye

Authors
  1. Henry H. Heng
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  2. Guo Liu
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  4. Christine J. Ye
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Henry H. Heng .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine and Public Health, Faculty of Health and Medicine, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

    Joachim P. Sturmberg

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Heng, H.H., Liu, G., Regan, S., Ye, C.J. (2018). Linking Gulf War Illness to Genome Instability, Somatic Evolution, and Complex Adaptive Systems. In: Sturmberg, J. (eds) Putting Systems and Complexity Sciences Into Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73636-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73636-5_7

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