ChemSemBlog

This week in Chemistry Seminar we enjoyed a presentation from a new faculty of the University of Notre Dame, Amanda B. Hummon, Ph.D. It was a very interesting talk on the process of gene selection and experimentation for detecting and describing colorectal cancer, a term we all learned to avoid due to its inaccuracy.

The first part of Dr. Hummon’s presentation focused solely on cancer as a disease in general. Some basic underlying truths are present in all types of cancer, such as increased growth rate, desensitization of cells to outside stimuli, avoidance of apoptosis, high vascularization, etc. Dr. Hummon enlightened us on chemical and biochemical methods I hadn’t heard of before, such as Spectral Karyotyping and Comparative Genomic Hybridization for DNA and qRT-PCR, Microarrays and RNAi for RNA.

In addition, Dr. Hummon introduced the notion of using Mass Spectrometry to sequence amino acids within proteins, a procedure I had never heard of before. We learned of the methods scientists use to select only specific genes for study, a glorified process of elimination which includes a lot of deductive reasoning with just a pinch of guesswork. Dr. Hummon’s study produced a list of almost 50 genes on chromosome 13 that were the most likely candidates for the emergence of colon and rectal cancers. She then proceeded to give the ways in which one could differentiate between cancer cells and normal cells using Microarrays, RNAi and other techniques. We learned that Microarrays will always require confirmation via some other test, and in this case Dr. Hummon prescribed RNAi as the best method.

I greatly enjoyed this seminar because of my interests in biochemistry, human physiology and oncology. I felt Dr. Hummon, however nervous or anxious she was prior to the meat of her lecture, did a splendid job and is sure to have a multitude of pupils helping her complete very important tests in our continued battle against ignorance of cancer. I found she was very helpful during Q & A and she was very knowledgeable yet personal.

To the layperson, this seminar was all about figuring out how genetics plays a role in colon and rectal cancers.

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