For Teachers

Through the use of this learning module, your students will gain knowledge about the nature of science and how it is conducted in the real world. Your students will also gain knowledge about cell signaling and how important it is. Specifically, with regards to nature of science and cell signaling, this module should convey the following ideas.

Nature of Science Learning Objectives:
• Scientific hypotheses are working hypotheses meaning they change and adapt as new information presents itself.
• Scientific experiments conducted in a laboratory (in vitro) can sometimes be far removed from the way biological systems behave in their natural environment (in vitro).

Essential Ideas
• Cells communicate with each other through various pathways and can alter each other's behavior through these communications.
• Cells use protein or small molecule interactions to communicate with each other.
• Though cell signaling is essential for normal biological function, sometimes cell signaling can become out of control and cause biological diseases such as cancer.
• Cell signaling can control the expression or repression of genes.
• Cells can communicate over a range of distances based on the method of communication they use.
• Scientists can use antibodies to mark/identify proteins or cells.

In order to make the learning experience more inquiry based, throughout this module, students will be presented with many open ended questions. Rather than providing specific answers within the module itself a link to a worksheet with all of the module questions and suggested answers is provided above. There is also an external link page to provide both teachers and students with other various resources pertaining to cancer, cell signaling, and antibodies.