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Loss of FAM40A in Breast Cancer Cells Causes Cell Cycle Arrest in G1 phase

Dam, Monica (2018) MOBN02 20172
Degree Projects in Molecular Biology
Popular Abstract
Preventing Cancer Cells from Proliferating

On average an adult body consists of 37,2 trillion cells and if we were to thread them into a string, we could wrap it around earth almost 19 times! Each of our cells are programmed to fulfil a certain characteristic function at the correct location and at the correct time. This is all possible to the extremely controlled communication we have between cells and inside the cells themselves. As you can imagine with so many cells, a lot of miscommunications are bound to happen, but they are often resolved by the neighboring cells and police of our bodies, the immune system. However, on very rare occasions the frustrations within a cell is not discovered by the immune system, and so it becomes... (More)
Preventing Cancer Cells from Proliferating

On average an adult body consists of 37,2 trillion cells and if we were to thread them into a string, we could wrap it around earth almost 19 times! Each of our cells are programmed to fulfil a certain characteristic function at the correct location and at the correct time. This is all possible to the extremely controlled communication we have between cells and inside the cells themselves. As you can imagine with so many cells, a lot of miscommunications are bound to happen, but they are often resolved by the neighboring cells and police of our bodies, the immune system. However, on very rare occasions the frustrations within a cell is not discovered by the immune system, and so it becomes agitated and starts to grow in numbers and size to spread rumors to overtake the other healthy cells. So, the big question is, how can we prevent this from happening? And can we design a therapy that targets a switch to calm the cells down?

The life of a cell, also call cell cycle, is divided into four phases; G1, S, G2 and M. In G1 the cell is preparing for a very exhausting process in S, which is to duplicate its DNA. S phase is then followed by G2, in which the cells are again preparing for another exhausting process coming up in M phase. In M it is extremely crucial that the cell divides its duplicated DNA equally into two daughter cells that are now back in G1 phase.

In recent years, a lot of research has been done on unravelling the cellular function of STRIPAK complex, which has been shown to play a role in controlling the cell cycle among others. In this study, we wanted to investigate STRIPAK complex in breast cancer cells and removed four important components of the STRIPAK complex to see what will happen to the cell cycle. Interestingly, removing one of the components lead to an arrest in G1 phase, but not when we remove each of the other components! We wanted to understand what miscommunication within these cells caused this arrest. Most often, cells get arrested when there is DNA damage to allow time to recruit the repair machinery. However, we observed quite the opposite, instead of more, these cells did not call for the repair machinery as much as the others! Yet, when we tried to visually observe possible DNA breaks there were no differences between our STRIPAK components. Subsequently, it seems like the cells either have an issue with communicating that there is damage to the DNA and that it needs to be fixed or that the repair machinery is more efficient at its work than usual. Clearly, more investigation about STRIPAK complex involvement in the cell cycle regulation needs to be done, but we are on the right track of finding a solution to this miscommunication!

Master’s Degree Project in Molecular Biology 45 credits 2018
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Division of Translational Cancer Research, Lund University
Advisor: Chris D. Madsen
Co-advisor: Alberto Garcia Mariscal (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Dam, Monica
supervisor
organization
course
MOBN02 20172
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
language
English
id
8958906
date added to LUP
2018-09-17 14:01:48
date last changed
2018-09-17 14:01:48
@misc{8958906,
  author       = {{Dam, Monica}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Loss of FAM40A in Breast Cancer Cells Causes Cell Cycle Arrest in G1 phase}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}