Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Captioning is on! Please click the CC button at the bottom right to turn off.

  • Follow the amoebas on Twitter (@amoebasisters) and on Facebook.

  • Today's topic is the cell cycle and mitosis. But before we get into the cell cycle and

  • mitosis, we want to be sure to talk about why these words are important and how they

  • relate to real life. So if I say the word cancer, this words probably means something

  • to you. Either you know somebody who has been diagnosed with cancer or you've heard about

  • it on the news. There's many different types of cancers but one thing they all have in

  • common is that they are caused by uncontrolled cell growth. That means, someone's own cells

  • grow out of control. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't other contributing factors

  • for example for some cancers having genetic links, meaning it runs in the family, can

  • make someone more likely to develop it, or having excessive exposure to UV light for

  • some cancers. Those are risk factors that can increase your risk. But the main cause

  • of cancer is uncontrolled cell growth. That also means it's something that it is not contagious

  • and that it's something that anyone can develop.

  • You have to realize that all the cells in your body are very busy. And they're either

  • in one of two different phases. They are either in a phase called interphase and during interphase

  • they are just growing, replicating DNA, their doing their cell functions or they are in

  • mitosis. Mitosis is a fancy word that means they are dividing, they are making new cells.

  • If you think about the cell cycle, whether they are in interphase or mitosis, it's kind

  • of like a pie graph. They are spending about 90% of their time in interphase. Most of the

  • time cells are not dividing, most of the time they are in interphase, they are growing,

  • they're doing their daily cell functions and they are replicating their DNA. Most of the

  • time, not dividing. Now, depending on what kind of cell, it might do mitosis more or

  • less often; for example, your hair follicle cells, they do mitosis frequently which is

  • why your hair can grow up to half an inch every month. But other cells like for example

  • your brain cells, your neurons, some of them do not perform mitosis, which is why if you

  • have some type of major injury to the spinal cord or to the brain, sometimes those do not

  • heal very well because those cells do not replicate.

  • So mitosis is very important to generate new cells, which can help with growth and also

  • if you damage your cells. If you're walking down the street and you have some kind of

  • accident, and you skin your knee, well you're going to need to repair those damaged cells.

  • You're going to need to be able to mitosis to repair those cells. The thing is you don't

  • want your cells to be always doing mitosis because if their always doing mitosis, then

  • they are always dividing and then they're not carrying out their actual function and

  • that's a problem.

  • That's where check points come in handy. See, along the cell cycle there are check points

  • to check that the cell is growing correctly and replicating it's dna correctly and doing

  • everything it's supposed to correctly before it divides. And what happens if the cell fails

  • it's check point? The cell does something called apoptosis which basically means the

  • cell destroys itself, it self-destructs. This might seem kind of harsh but actually it's

  • really important because it ensures you don't have these cells that are messed up continue

  • on and divide. You don't want damaged cells to continue on and divide because they might

  • do not do what they are supposed to, they might start to grow out of control, they might

  • not be regulated correctly.

  • That's where cancer cells come in. See cancer cells, as we had said, are your body's own

  • cells that are growing out of control. So they are not following the rules of these

  • checkpoints, they are flying past the check points going through the cell cycle and frequently

  • doing mitosis, which means they are dividing very, very often. And so by doing that they

  • can grow into these things called tumors which are really a mass of cancer cells. So we're

  • not really sure what causes them to escape these check points. There are a lot of factors

  • that a person can have that will increase their risk of this happening, but when these

  • cells get past these check points and grow out of control, they become a problem. Because

  • many times they can travel through the bloodstream, they started growing out of control, the body

  • can't identify them and destroy them with the immune system and so this becomes an issue

  • and usually one the treatments that someone with cancer will go through is called chemotherapy.

  • And this works by targeting cells that go through the cell cycle quickly and hit mitosis

  • quickly. And that's one reason why many people will lose their hair when they are on chemotherapy

  • because their medication that's targeting fast growing cells and their hair follicle

  • cells are also fast growing cells.

  • Cancer cells have some other factors that make them difficult to treat. One is that

  • cancers have the ability to secrete their own growth hormone. This is very bad because

  • growth hormone in the sense, think of it as a hormone that says, "FEED ME." What happens

  • is the blood vessels will divert over to those cancer cells and supply the cancer cells with

  • nutrients. This is not good because it means the cancer cells will have the nutrients they

  • need to keep growing out of control. It also can take nutrients away from nearby healthy

  • cells. There are some medications that are being researched that maybe could stop the

  • growth hormone from cancer cells and in the sense that would be great because the cancer

  • cells would not be able to get the nutrients to grow out of control. Of course, you have

  • to make sure the medication is targeting just cancer cells and that hurting the growth hormone

  • of nearby healthy cells. You wouldn't want that. So it's kind of a tricky situation.

  • So let's recap what we talked about today. We talked about the cell cycle, how cells

  • are more frequently in interphase than in mitosis. Interphase is when cells are replicating

  • their DNA or their growing, and carrying out cell processes. In mitosis, the cells are

  • actually dividing. We talked about how during this cell cycle there are checkpoints that

  • regulate the cell and keep the cell from being able to continue on if it's damaged...unless

  • we're talking about cancer cells which are cells that have escaped the checkpoints and

  • are growing out of control. Be sure to check out our clip on mitosis. This process is really

  • fascinating, but it's also a really important one in order to understand how your body cells

  • work. That's it for the Amoeba Sisters, and we remind you to stay curious!

Captioning is on! Please click the CC button at the bottom right to turn off.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it