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Low-cost, high-impact altruistic punishment promotes cooperation cascades in human social networks.

ABSTRACT: Theoretical models and experiments suggest that social networks may significantly impact the emergence and stability of cooperation in humans. Similarly, theoretical models and experiments have shown that punishing behavior can significantly increase cooperative behavior in individuals. However, how punishing impacts the effects of social networks on cooperation is not yet understood. Here, I examine a set of laboratory experiments in which participants choose to cooperate or defect under differing punishment arrangements. Through analysis of the experiment as a network, I evaluate how institutional arrangements affect the degree to which social networks promote cooperative behavior. The results show that cooperative behavior spreads from person-to-person in all versions of the game, but that in versions of the game with low-cost, high-impact punishment the influence both endures for more rounds and spreads further in the network. These results show that the extent to which cooperative behavior cascades is affected by the institutional arrangements that govern game play.

SUBMITTER: Bond RM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6376046 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Low-cost, high-impact altruistic punishment promotes cooperation cascades in human social networks.

Bond Robert M RM

Scientific reports 20190214 1

Theoretical models and experiments suggest that social networks may significantly impact the emergence and stability of cooperation in humans. Similarly, theoretical models and experiments have shown that punishing behavior can significantly increase cooperative behavior in individuals. However, how punishing impacts the effects of social networks on cooperation is not yet understood. Here, I examine a set of laboratory experiments in which participants choose to cooperate or defect under differ ...[more]

PMID: 30765746

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Project description:BackgroundSocial behaviors such as altruism, where one self-sacrifices for collective benefits, critically influence an organism's survival and responses to the environment. Such behaviors are widely exemplified in nature but have been underexplored in cancer cells which are conventionally seen as selfish competitive players. This multidisciplinary study explores altruism and its mechanism in breast cancer cells and its contribution to chemoresistance.MethodsMicroRNA profiling was performed on circulating tumor cells collected from the blood of treated breast cancer patients. Cancer cell lines ectopically expressing candidate miRNA were used in co-culture experiments and treated with docetaxel. Ecological parameters like relative survival and relative fitness were assessed using flow cytometry. Functional studies and characterization performed in vitro and in vivo include proliferation, iTRAQ-mass spectrometry, RNA sequencing, inhibition by small molecules and antibodies, siRNA knockdown, CRISPR/dCas9 inhibition and fluorescence imaging of promoter reporter-expressing cells. Mathematical modeling based on evolutionary game theory was performed to simulate spatial organization of cancer cells.ResultsOpposing cancer processes underlie altruism: an oncogenic process involving secretion of IGFBP2 and CCL28 by the altruists to induce survival benefits in neighboring cells under taxane exposure, and a self-sacrificial tumor suppressive process impeding proliferation of altruists via cell cycle arrest. Both processes are regulated concurrently in the altruists by miR-125b, via differential NF-κB signaling specifically through IKKβ. Altruistic cells persist in the tumor despite their self-sacrifice, as they can regenerate epigenetically from non-altruists via a KLF2/PCAF-mediated mechanism. The altruists maintain a sparse spatial organization by inhibiting surrounding cells from adopting the altruistic fate via a lateral inhibition mechanism involving a GAB1-PI3K-AKT-miR-125b signaling circuit.ConclusionsOur data reveal molecular mechanisms underlying manifestation, persistence and spatial spread of cancer cell altruism. A minor population behave altruistically at a cost to itself producing a collective benefit for the tumor, suggesting tumors to be dynamic social systems governed by the same rules of cooperation in social organisms. Understanding cancer cell altruism may lead to more holistic models of tumor evolution and drug response, as well as therapeutic paradigms that account for social interactions. Cancer cells constitute tractable experimental models for fields beyond oncology, like evolutionary ecology and game theory.

Dataset Information

Low-cost, high-impact altruistic punishment promotes cooperation cascades in human social networks.

Publications

Low-cost, high-impact altruistic punishment promotes cooperation cascades in human social networks.

Similar Datasets

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