Guiding Questions

Q. How do scientists figure out which genes and proteins to study from the thousands of potential genes in the genome and even larger number of proteins in the cell? There must be some way to narrow down the search

Q. How do scientists figure out which genes and proteins to study from the thousands of potential genes in the genome and even larger number of proteins in the cell? There must be some way to narrow down the search

A. Scientists in older times were forced to "get lucky" with their explorations. Today they use advances in biotechnological techniques to test large numbers of genes and proteins for some response to find those worthy of further study. This is explored in Identifying Genes for Research.

Q. How can you target therapies at cancer when cancer is made of the same cells as the human body? What about cancer makes it different (and therefore targetable by drugs) from normal cells and how would you design drugs to make treatments better?

Q. How can you target therapies at cancer when cancer is made of the same cells as the human body? What about cancer makes it different (and therefore targetable by drugs) than normal cells and how would you design drugs to make treatments better?

A. Chemotherapy has deadly poisonous effects on all cells that are dividing, this causes it to mostly targets cells that are dividing rapidly, such as cancer, while other cells are sometimes caught in the crossfire. Chemotherapy can be improved greatly by any method which allows lower doses to be more effective against cancer, or which decrease the chance that the treatment will effect non-cancer cells.. This is discussed in How do we Treat Cancer? and Protein Targets.

Q. How can you change the contents of a cell (the genes and proteins that are active in it) in a way that is specific to what you are trying to add/remove but also able to be performed in a timely fashion? What aspects of a normal cell can be exploited to create new cells with features that you desire?

Q. How can you change the contents of a cell (the genes and proteins that are active in it) in a way that is specific to what you are trying to add/remove but also able to be performed in a timely fashion? What aspects of a normal cell can be exploited to create new cells with features that you desire?

A. The contents of the cell can be changed by manipulating the normal process the cell uses to create proteins from genes. The cell converts DNA > RNA > Protein in a fashion that is called the "central dogma" of biology. Blocking a step, or adding to a step, allows manipulation of the exact features of the cell at a protein level. Discussed in RNA Interference.

Q. If you were a scientist and were investigation a human disease such as cancer, how do you do experiments without harming patients? How does the inability to perform tests on humans change how we test and what the results of our experiments mean?

Q. If you were a scientist and were investigation a human disease such as cancer, how do you do experiments without harming patients? How does the inability to perform tests on humans change how we test and what the results of our experiments mean?

A. Many scientific experiments in biology and medicine are performed on Model Organisms, such as mice or cancer cell lines, that are close enough to humans for research purposes. Because they are not human experimental subjects however, the results must be carefully tested for multiple more complicated interactions in humans, long before potential drugs are released. These topics are covered in Modeling Cancer and Drug development.