Cytogenetic "rogue" cells: what is their frequency, origin, and evolutionary significance?

Among 102,170 cultured lymphocytes obtained from 9818 individuals from Hiroshima, Japan, aged 9 to 37 years and scored for chromosomal abnormalities, 24 cells that exhibited an extreme degree of damage were encountered. The damage consists of multiple dicentric and even tricentric chromosomes, as well as numerous fragments, many with the appearance of "double minutes." The occurrence of these cells was not correlated with parental exposure to the atomic bomb, age, sex, year, or season. They were nonrandomly distributed by individual. Such cells were originally described in South American Indians and have also been recorded in inhabitants of the United States and the United Kingdom; this appears to be a world-wide phenomenon. Their cause remains unknown, and it is not known whether they occur in other somatic and germ-line cells. Should the latter be the case and should the least damaged of these cells occasionally successfully complete mitosis and meiosis, the possible role of such cells in oncogenesis and evolution must be considered.