The Cell Cycle and Cancer
I. Purpose
In this experiment, I will compare and contrast normal tissue and cancerous tissues in different phases with regards to the cell cycle.
II. Background
Cancer is a disease that can develop in many parts of the body. Cancer occurs when cells begin to lose its ability to regulate the cell cycle. The cancer cells divide at a fast and uncontrollable rate. Cancer cells do not perform the function they were intended to do. Also, cancer cells continue to duplicate when cells contact each other and the cancer cells do not die often.
III. Hypothesis
I believe normal cell tissues will look different than cancerous tissues with regard to phases in the cell cycle in that cells will divide more because cancer cells lack cyclin. If I am correct, I will see a greater amount of cancer cells duplicate as measured by a microscope.
IV. Materials
- Microscope
- Virtual lab
- Normal Ovary tissues
- Cancerous Ovary tissues
- Normal Lung tissues
- Cancerous Lung tissues
- Normal Stomach tissues
- Cancerous Stomach tissues
V. Procedure
- Click on the monitor to watch the video about the cell cycle.
- Click the information button to learn about cancer.
- Click on the microscope to begin learning about the phases of mitosis.
- Click and drag the label to the corresponding cell under the microscope.
- Open the data table and begin to record the number of cells in each phase of mitosis in the tissue sample. Use the calculator to determine the percentage of cells at rest. After counting all the cells in a particular sample, click the "Tissue Slides" and select a new sample. You can choose from normal or cancerous tissues.
- Open the journal to answer some questions about cell division and cancer.
VI. Data
VII. Journal Questions
- There are more cells dividing in cancerous cells than in normal cells. There are more cells at rest in normal cells compared to cancer cells.
- Cancerous tissues have the highest mitotic index because cancerous cells uncontrollably duplicate and the duplication will not pause.
- I think the highest to lowest mitotic index is lung, skin, muscle, and kidney. Lung cells will have to be replaced everyday because of food while skin will have to be replaced whenever the skin gets damaged. Muscle people don't damage the muscles as much as the others and the kidney rarely gets damaged.
VIII. Conclusion
In this experiment, I expected cancerous cells to have differences when compared to normal cells. The results of this experiments is that cancerous cells did have differences compared to normal cells. From observing the experiment, cancer cells had most cells dividing and normal cells had the most cells at rest. The commonalities in this experiment is that cancer cells have at least 50 percent or higher cells at rest. Also, normal cells have a range of 75 to 100 percent of cells at rest. For this experiment, I would add multiple tissues of each type of tissue to see if there will be a constant rate in the data. An unavoidable error in this experiment is the amount of cells that are located in one tissue. There can be different amounts of cells in other tissues.