What kind of question puts me in a state of flow?
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What kind of question puts me in a state of flow?
What is cancer? What causes cancer? What ideas do I have about it? What is my flow topic ABOUT? Although commonly seen as a touchy subject, cancer is a disease that impacts everyone of us someway or another. Whether it be because of how infamous the disease has become since it was first discovered, or because of personal experience. To this day medical practitioners still have yet to find a way to cure cancer without causing harm to the victim. Despite its popularity, many are not exactly clear on what cancer is itself. Cancer is the abnormal growth of cells. NOT the destruction of cells. This abnormal growth of cells would generally be stopped by apoptosis, simply known as cell suicide, or destruction by the immune system. Yet for some odd reason this does not always happen, whether it be a genetic mutation caused by excess radiation or external conditions, such as smoking or unhealthy lifestyles, the cell remains living. Since the cells remain living they go through the process of mitosis exceptionally quickly. This is why tumors don't grow really slow, they grow kinda fast, as in faster than your height that is. This speedy mitosis causes the cells to be rather small, but abundant in number. This contributes to why when you get chemotherapy or another cancer treatment they commonly look for places where the cancer may have traveled to. The rapid mitosis also prevents the cells from adhering to other cells and being able to travel through the body by means of blood stream or other methods and go through mitosis wherever they end up. For example if you had a cancer cell get into your bloodstream from your foot, it could travel all the way up into your lungs, heart, or even brain and cause cancers there (Hypothetically). This doesn't always happen though, so don't worry too much! What are the POINTS associated with this subject that you already know? Dig into the topic for about 30 minutes...what did you learn about it? (-: Already known, >: New information) -Cancer is the abnormal, and uncontrolled growth of cells - Cancer can spread to other parts of the body > Cancer can be prevented by apoptosis and the immune system > Cancer cells multiply through a speedy and unregulated mitosis process > Cancer cells are small, but abundant > Cancer cells do not adhere to other things like normal cells > Some forms of chemo target fast growing cells, which is why you get nausea and hair loss as symptoms. (These are fast growing cells) Reaction I find the subject of cancer to be rather enriching personally. I believe it is simply because there is not much known about cancer and that there is SO MUCH we could still learn from it. I of course, do not have access to medical research files that would allow me to accurately say this, but if it has not been tried, I would think that a chemical that targets cells that produce and abnormal abundance of cyclin would be a good start for any symposium research on cancer. Since cyclin and kinase are the protein/enzyme combos that control the regulation of the cell cycle and in turn control the regulation of mitosis itself. If I were not so interested in astronomy and math cancer research would be my dream job. I've always found the topic just so INTERESTING since there is so much more to learn about it and benefit from it. For example, since cancer cells do not stop dividing after they've reached the edge of a petri dish, they layer on top of one another and keep multiplying, which allows to you scrape the cells off one petri dish and place them on another to multiply and have more cells to complete tests on. The one problem with this of course is that the cells multiply unregulated, so it may be difficult to conduct tests that would be effective unless you managed to impact each and every cell in the test. Then of course you'd see the results as the cells continue to reproduce. I don't mean to sound like a know-it-all on this subject like I'm sure I do, but its just so much fun to think about the possibilities and I'm only using what I know and learned from my teachers! Sources: Dr. Ricasa <- My Doctor Mrs. Jackson's Magnet Biology Class |