Cancer Flashcards
What is transformation?
the failure of cells to remain constrained in their growth properties and give rise to tumors, uptake of naked DNA
What is the process of transformation?
naked DNA – transformation –> cancer
What is contact-inhibition?
normal cells that stop growing/multiplying when touching
What is multilayer of uninhibition?
cancer cells that pile on top of each other they essentially ignore the contact inhibition
What is a benign tumor?
a tumor that grows to a certain size and then stops, usually with a fibrous capsule surrounding the mass of cells
what is a malignant tumor?
a tumor whose cells can invade surrounding tissues and spread to other organs
what is metastasis?
the spreading of malignant tumor cells throughout the body so that tumors develop at new sites
chemotherapy
cancerous cells interfere with DNA synthesis by either slowing down DNA synthesis, interrupting chain elongation, or lack of specific nucleotides, when you kill S phase cells you kill a lot of normal cells
oncogenes
cancer-causing, dominant cancer genes, a gene whose action promotes cell proliferation
recessive cancer genes
a tumor suppressor genes/inhibit cancer progression
rous sarcoma virus (oncogene)
cell free (virus) filtrates could also induce tumor development
gag
precursor protein that is cleaved to produce virus particle proteins
pol
encodes a precursor that is cleaved to produce reverse transcriptase and an enzyme needed for the integration of the proviral DNA into the host cell chromosome
env
precursor to the envelope glycoprotein
src protein
has three domains but one contains a kinase (adds phosphate groups, reversible)
activation of src
V-src is missing C terminus and the inhibitory phosphorylation site, so its always active
inputs that turn on activation
phosphate removed
binding interrupted
phosphate added (to a different spot)
src pathway
- growth factors: if there’s too much will go to receptor pushing pathway forward), oncogene
- growth factor receptors: acting via tyrosine-specific protein-kinase activity
- GTP binding protein (intracellular transducer): turn on and off certain genes
- src protein kinase (intracellular transducer): turn on and off certain genes
proto-oncogene
normal gene, usually concerned with the regulation of cell proliferation, that can be converted into a cancer-promoting oncogene by mutation, mRNA is reversed transcribed and gets inserted into retroviral genome
“activation”
proto-oncogene is being “converted” to an oncogene
classes of proto-oncogene
- GF
- GFR
- IT
- NTF
direct isolation of human oncogenes
- tumor cells (where the oncogenes are, easy to grow in labs)
- isolate total cellular DNA
- partial restriction digest
- ligate marker gene
- marked genes
- transform into mouse host cells
- isolate total DNA
- re-transform mouse host cells
- re-isolate DNA
- package into virus
- isolate viral plaques with marker
tumor suppressor gene
like breaks on a car, takes away both “breaks in cell cycle”, genes which cause cancer when both copies of the gene are mutated in a diploid and lead to loss of function
RB1
makes protein pRB that helps stop cells from growing too quickly, causes retinoblastoma if mutated
p53
stops cell cycle & encourages cell death, is stabilized (by phosphorylation) upon DNA damage, is a transcription factor (turns on and off genes which DNA damage allows for), turns on p21
FAS1
targeted by p53 b/c its involved in apoptosis
p21
“clamp”, clamps onto cyclin complex to stop from phosphorylation hence stops cell cycle
retinoblastoma
gene product reversibly inhibits progression through cell-cycle (p53)
hereditary
have to knock out both genes for cancer
sporadic
non-inherited mutation
cancer process
normal epithelium – (loss of APC) –> hyper-proliferative epithelium – (increased genetic instability, loss of p53?) –> early adenoma – (activation of K-Ras) –> intermediate adenoma – (loss of Smad4 and other tumor suppressors) –> late adenoma – (loss of p53?) –> carcinoma – (other unknown alterations) –> metastasis
pancreatic cancer
fast and deadly