MICROBIO 160 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Endometrial Cancer, Colorectal Cancer, Prostate Cancer

• School: UMASS-Amherst
• Department: Microbiology
• Course: MICROBIO 160
• Professor: Wilmore Welby

Document Summary

Lecture 9: identifying the causes of cancer (cont. ) Bruce ames--came up with a way to screen mutagens . If it has a high risk for mutagens, it has a high risk for carcinogens in the body, leading to cancer. If you take an organism and watch it grow without histidine in it, sometimes it will still grow/mutate. Take a substance and mix it with liver homogenate (because a lot of substances do not become immunogenic or carcinogenic until it interacts with the liver). Then put the substance into a plate and add bacteria to growth medium lacking histidine to see if it will grow. Direct correlation between substances that are highly mutagenic and carcinogenic. Larynx, bladder, mouth, pharynx, esophagus = 20% chance. Epidemiologists estimate that diet plays a role in ~30-35% of all fatal cancers! The more meat we eat the more calories we cannot use. Therefore, the unused calories are stored and turn to fat.