Does Oncogene Cause Cancer

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This is mostly caused by that every cancer is caused by a different set of gene mutations. Genes consist of a sequence of DNA, and each sequence is a set of chemical bases called nucleotides that are arranged in a very specific order. Together, they tell the cell how to manufacture proteins, and we are mostly just made up of proteins - so that’s how we build ourselves. Mutations change those instructions, and that’s where things start to go wrong. Now, we know by this point that cancers usually come from mutations of two kinds of genes, called oncogenes and tumor suppressors. An oncogene starts out as just a normal gene that codes for proteins that signal the cell to grow. And normally, they just spend a lot of their time inactive, because growth is generally good, but cells …show more content…

There’s a serious problem, though. One study compared the results of the Cancer Genome Project and the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia, and it found that they came to different conclusions alarmingly often. When the two different groups of researchers treated the same cancer cells with the same drugs in a lab, they got different results. Even though the cells they used were more or less identical, they would sometimes respond differently to the exact same drugs. And even when the two projects agreed that a drug could treat a certain kind of cancer, they disagreed about what dose was needed to be effective. So, we won’t be able to count on personalized medicine to work until scientists come up with more effective ways to test these drugs, and figure out how to use them in people. So there are still some things to work out, but it’s a hopeful lead we have in the fight against cancer. We haven’t found one cure for cancer yet, but that’s kind of a question wrongly asked; there is no cancer to cure -- there are lots of cancers we need to

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