Second Week Back

In the second week back from break we continued our research while learning about cancer and our bodies defenses for it.  To see what I did for my paper see previous blog.  This review paper was fairly easy and interesting because it is a lot like what I do in Museum Research, but it is a completely new and to a point, an uncharted topic.  During these classes though, we learned about the tumor suppressor that humans naturally make called p53 that stops cancer cells.  It stops them by either repairing the mutated DNA or deciding that the DNA is irreparable and makes the cell go through apoptosis (cell seppuku).  Unfortunately as we grow older this p53 gene can mutate and or stop producing nearly as much, so the tumors can become rampant.  This is where Chris and I's idea for "solving" cancer came in.  In presentation form we had to explain our original idea (at least feasible) that could cure a victim of cancer.  So our idea was to inject through the bloodstream more coding for p53 so that our bodies can better suppress tumors even at an older age.