â¢ AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE (noun). The noun AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE has 1 sense: 1. any of a large group of diseases characterized by abnormal functioning of the immune system that causes your immune system to produce antibodies against your own tissues.
The initiation of cell transformation is generally associated with genetic alterations in normal cells that lead to the loss of intercellular-and/or extracellular-matrix- (ECM-) mediated cell adhesion.ancer afflicts an organ or a tissue by inducing abnormal and uncontrolled division of cells that either constitute it or migrate to it. At the cellular level, this is caused by genetic alterations in networks that regulate cell division and cell death.
Mutations are defined as random changes in cellular DNA. They change the genetic code for amino acid sequence in proteins, thus introducing biochemical errors of varying degrees of severity. Mutations have been classified as deletions (loss of DNA bases), insertions (gain of DNA bases), and missense or nonsense (substitution of a DNA base). If the mutations affect germ cells (female ova and male spermatozoa), they will be passed to all the cells of the offspring, and affect future generations. Such mutations are called âgermline mutations,â and are the cause of inherited diseases.