It is important to keep in mind that any environmentally-induced ncRNA-mediated adaptive response, such as exemplified above, is often complemented or replaced at later stages of cancer development by selection for cells or clones carrying genetic variants that provide the same adaptive phenotype [e.g. regulatory mutations that increase the expression of PD-L1 (e.g. Stein et al. 2021)]. Here, CD274 is linked to cancer.