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What holds the insides of cells together? And how does it allow cancerous cells to spread across the body? This structure is called the cell membrane. Think of it like a water balloon holding all the fluid (cytoplasm) and organelles (parts inside a cell that perform specific functions, e.g., the mitochondrian) inside it.  The cell…

Written by Staff Writer Arsheen Kaur When it comes to cell biology, cancer really has a way of breaking rules.  Normal cells follow a specific code of conduct in order to sustain order, sticking close to home, replicating only when told to, and committing suicide (apoptosis) when injured or away from their niche.  Loss of…

Written by Staff Writer Alexis Dong Cancer has been a part of human history for millions of years. The earliest recorded description of cancer goes back all the way to ancient Egyptian medical records from around 3000 BCE. Today, millions of people still die from this disease.  With a history that long, why have we…

Hi there! So you’ve decided you want to explore cancer biology a little deeper and learn more about all the interesting subfields it has. This guide will help you dip your toes into cancer biology research by explaining how to read review papers. By practicing this skill, you’ll soon be able to read research papers…

Written by Staff Writer Arsheen Kaur Every time a cell in your body divides, something weird happens: its chromosomes get shorter. This happens because the enzyme that controls DNA replication, DNA polymerase, can’t copy the end of one of the strands of DNA.  If this happens enough times, it can make the cell unable to…

A Deep-dive into Syn-Bio Oncology ft. Spliced. Introduction What if a future cure for cancer wasn’t from chemotherapy, immunotherapies, or surgery but something normally thought of as “bad”? Bacteria (yes, really) could offer us a solution to normally hard-to-reach tumors that our current attempts haven’t been able to crack, through a process most people associate…

Written by Staff Writer Arsheen Kaur Which one has a higher risk of cancer: blue whales or mice? If cancer were simply a numbers game, blue whales should be absolute giants when it comes to tumors. With around a thousand times more cells than a human, and a lifespan of 80-90 years, there should be…

If all cells have the same DNA, then how come there are different types? And how is this process related to cancer? Gene regulation is how the cell controls what genes are expressed, when they’re expressed, and how much they’re expressed . Some examples we’ll explore are: In this post, we’ll look at how gene…

After proteins are made by ribosomes during translation (here is a previous post covering how proteins are made), they require many additional chemical modifications to fold into the right shape to perform their different functions. These changes are essential because even the smallest changes to structure can dramatically alter how a protein behaves in the…

As we saw in the previous post, proteins are essential to life because of all the different functions that they perform. But how does the cell make them?  In this post, we’ll explore how proteins are assembled inside the cell through a process called protein synthesis, and how disruptions in this process can play a…