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Nanomedicine Activity 1

Healthy vs. Cancerous Cells.

Introduction

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A biological cell is the basic building block of an organism. In humans, cells within the body can range from widths of around 7 micrometers  for red blood cells to 120 micrometers  for female human egg cells . Cells carry out many activities such as: processes the food one eats into energy by metabolism, creates structure and order in the body, allows the body to get bigger by creating more cells, houses all the instructions (DNA) for the cell as well as performs many varied functions depending on what kind of specialised cell it is .

 

Cells make up organisms by bundling together according to their special function to form tissues; such as muscle, fat or protein.

Image shows a diagram of a eukaryotic animal cell.

Created by By Mediran [CC BY-SA 3.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons)

Image above shows the cells cycle of a cancer cell. If you look closely you can see that the two cells produced one is warped. This is due to the cell not participating in the cell cycle correctly. You will learn more about this later.

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Image created by Bruce Blaus [CC BY-SA 4.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons).

These tissues then bundle with other tissues to form organs such as liver, kidneys or skin and from here, different organs bundle together to form organ systems such as the respiratory system, digestive system or immune system to name a few .

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This is no small feat to make all these tissues, organs and systems and requires trillions of individual cells; on average 37.2 trillion in an average human  to specialise, bundle together and work as a team to make a fully functioning healthy human body. However, when some cells in the body get damaged (by chemicals, UV light etc) or their instructions altered (by mutations, spontaneous or through damage) a cell can start acting up and go rogue; carrying out unintended behaviors which can result in dire health consequences such as cancer. This is uncontrolled cell replication .

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So what are cells and what’s cancer?

 

To understand what makes healthy and cancerous cells you need to understand some of the basic concepts and functions of cells and the cell cycle.

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Watch the following clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVCjdNxJreE&t=406s about cells and the cell cycle and answer the questions below.

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‘The Cell Cycle (and Cancer)’ 20th March 2018, youtube clip, The Ameoba Sisters, retrieved 29/08/2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVCjdNxJreE&t=406s

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  1. What are cells?

  2. Explain how cells are arranged to form multicellular organisms.

  3. How do multicellular organisms grow bigger?

  4. What is cancer?

  5. Compare the traits of healthy cells and cancer cells.

  6. What are the two major segments of the cell cycle and what do they involve? Draw a circle and cut it into sections to represent the different parts of the cell cycle.

  7. What are checkpoints and what do they check? Add these to the sketch.

  8. What’s apoptosis? Why is this important?

  9. What kind of cells go into cell cycle G 0? Add G 0 to the sketch.

Create a word document or download the student activity sheet to the right (click on word document icon) to answer the following questions:

References:

1. Huang, M., Huang, C., n.d., “The Scale of the Universe”, online interactive scale tool, viewed 10/9/18, http://htwins.net/scale2/  

 

2. Hickman, C.P., Roberts, L.S., Keen, S.L., Larson, A., I’Anson, H, 2011, ‘ Chapter 3: Cells as Units of Life’, fifteenth edition, Lange, M., David, M. (eds), Integrated principles of Zoology, McGraw-Hill, New York, pp. 35-54.

 

3. Campbell, N.A. Reece, J.B. Meyers, N. Urry, L.A. Cain, M.L. Wasserman, Minorsky, P.V. & Jackson, R.B. 2010, ‘Chapter 6: A Tour of the Cell’, Australian 8th edition, Aarons, M., Pomponio, R. & Stone, M. (eds), Biology, Pearson Education Australia PTY LTD, N/A, pp. 94-123.

 

4. Bianconi E, Piovesan A, Facchin F, Beraudi A, Casadei R, Frabetti F, Vitale L, Pelleri MC, Tassani S, Piva F, Perez-Amodio S, Strippoli P, Canaider S., 2013, “An estimation of the number of cells in the human body.” , Ann Hum Biol. Vol. 40, Iss. 6, pp. 463-71. doi: 10.3109/03014460.2013.807878. Epub 2013 Jul 5

 

5. NIH, National Cancer Institute, 2015, ‘What is Cancer?’, retrieved 29/08/2018, https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/what-is-cancer

6. ‘The Cell Cycle (and Cancer)’ 20th March 2018, youtube clip, The Ameoba Sisters, retrieved 29/08/2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVCjdNxJreE&t=406s

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