Question

Read the paragraph and answer the following questions:

Apatient was admitted to the hospital complaining of digestion problems. The gastroenterologist diagnosed the problem as an intestinal blockage. Further exploratory surgery revealed the surprising presence of a tumor in the small intestine. Since the vast majority of intestinal tumors occur in the large intestine, the pathologist wished to further investigate the origin of this tumor. The tumor exhibited all of the classical hallmarks of a pancreatic tumor which had invaded the wall of the adjacent small intestine. Investigation into the past medical history of the patient revealed that he had suffered a case of pancreatitis approximately 5 years before. Since one of the major known causes of pancreatitis is viral infection, the pathologist wondered whether the past viral infection was responsible for the newly discovered pancreatic tumor. Since you are the medical center's expert on viral oncology, he has asked you for assistance in designing experiments to investigate this possibility.

1) How might you prove experimentally that the virus was involved in the development of the tumor? (Hint-its Christmas: Think HPV and Cervical Cancer)
2) What are the three general ways that the virus could act to alter the normal growth regulation of the pancreatic cells and how would you experimentally distinguish between them?
3) How would you identify the gene responsible for tumor formation? How you determine if this gene functions as an oncogene or a mutated would y tumor suppressor?

Answer 1

1) pancreatitis caused by virus such as hepatitis b, mumps, coxsackievirus

Test such as lisney test, in which viral antibody are detected

Blood test done in which enzyme level is detected, if normal then go for CT scan

2) three ways

Attachment, Entery, replication and gene expression

All these three are different, attachment is the process in which virus is adhere to cell membrane

Entery, virus enter into cytoplasm of cell, release it's genetic material

Regulation and gene expression - viral genetic material ( RNA) combines with cell genetic material and take over its function.

3) identification of gene responsible for tumor formation is done by tumor markers

Tumor markers found in blood , urine, tissue fluid and rise in tumor formation. There are different tumor marker for different tumor like prostate specific antigen ( PSA) , prostatic acid phosphatase ( PAP) .

Oncogene is process in which gene transform normal cell into cancerous cells. Mainly caused by mutation