Cancerous

... np). Cancer is frequently observed in the elderly and rare seen in the young. At least partially, the immune system mediates apoptosis of early cancerous cells that randomly appear but in the elderly, the enviornment is such that the cell ignores internal and external signals to stop dividing. ...

See entire post

... exposed and damaged. However, if telomeres are kept forever long, the increased risk of cancer outweighs any good of keeping the cell alive. Cancerous cells are only dangerous because they can keep the telomeres long enough to continually divide and make copies of the mutant onco genes (this ...

See entire post

... age or an old age. Perhaps some carcinogens never leave your system, so their damages accumulate more if they enter while you're young. Perhaps cancerous cells are more prone to oncogene activation because their cell division cycles have been messed up, or just because they divide more often, ...

See entire post

... ends are cut as well! Telomerase is an enzyme that adds telomeres to the ends of chromosomes. The problem is that telomerase exists only in the cancerous cells (and I don't actually understand why) and germ cells. Therefore, because it doesn't exist in the normal somatic cells, these cells will ...

See entire post

... could be influenced by many things other than proteins called cofactors. Perhaps tobacco contains a chemical that acts as a cofactor for cancerous genes. Therefore, we conclude that smoking causes cancer. The question of why cells with identical genomes develop into different tissue is ...

See entire post