It's GRAAIINNNNSSSSS....
Well, now that that's out of the way, let's get to talking about those mutant zombie cancer plant's I mentioned. Most of the radioactive food we eat comes from one path: plants absorbing radioactive water/soil isotopes and us eating those or plant absorbing stuff then transferring it to animals that eat them which we then eat. What happens to humans after they start drinking radiation contaminated water or eating radiation contaminated food from those nasty radioisotopes spreading through the environment from fallout/improperly disposed of nuclear waste/facility accidents? Bad stuff: cancer, nausea, defects, possible genetic repercussions for you and any future children. Yeah, nasty stuff. Similar stuff happens to animals, most people know cancer isn't specific to just humans. But, did you know plants can get cancer as well?
Cancer is usually associated with the terrible thing that afflicts upwards of 40% of humans and is frequently fatal. Cancer is really just rabidly reproducing cells. That's it. Something so simple can cause so much pain and suffering and cost so much money. It sucks, a lot, when your own body just fills up with a mass of useless cells in places where they don't belong. I went over this in a blog a few weeks ago but I'll summarize it briefly. Cancer comes in stages 0-4. 0 is in-situ, like brand new, single location cancers that aren't as bad, relatively. Stage 1 is localized where they start growing in place and being a big nuisance where they shouldn't, moving to adjacent tissues, moving nerves, pressing on things, like a golf ball inserted somewhere in your body. Stage 2-3 is where the cancer enters the lymph and starts to mobilize. A lot of time Stage 3 is showing up in the lymph nodes and causing problems. Eventually, stage 4 starts where there are too many mobile cancer cells for the lymph nodes to strain out and they spread throughout the body, overwhelming the immune system. Tons of golf balls and damaged tissues all over the body. Bad.
All this comes from a couple strands of DNA getting hit by the ionizing radiation in the contaminated food. So, can plants get cancer? The answer is yes since plants are made of cells, and these cells can also be damaged or infected and start to reproduce rapidly. Plant cells, if you remember your old Biology lectures, have cell walls made of cellulose which makes them much more rigid. Because of this, it is very hard for cancers to move far from their origins. This tends to produce bumps or knots in the wood that look like:
The cure for cancer may not be out there but maybe ways to preempt it are! Plants found a way.
Sorry for lack of mutant and zombie related themes.
-Michael
Yeah my only problem with this post was the lack of more mutant and zombie-related theme/pictures. It makes sense that plants have a very different circulatory system that it would be hard for cancer cells to just up and move. Very interesting though of a topic. I wonder about the risk rates for plant cancer. Plants seem to require radiation naturally, so one would expect an evolutionary resistance to cancer. Paint ourselves green and mimic plants to acquire there natural resistance... Maybe
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty cool that plants are able to be relatively cancer resistant. I wonder if it would be possible to adopt something like cell walls in our cells, without undesired consequences (like turning into Groot). Something I think we should move towards is nanobots that go into our bodies and destroy bacteria. Maybe someday soon...
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of new cancer treatments, did you see the any of the new T cell therapy stuff? where they basically turn our own immune cells into nanobots to attack cancers? Pretty cool stuff.
DeleteSpeaking of mutant zombie plants, howabout these mutant zombie animals: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep19974
ReplyDeleteThis publishing assessed the wear and tear of the animals’ teeth. By this authors were able to estimate their age, and used this to calculate their lifetime radiation exposure. Interestingly, this was found to correlate directly with the frequency of cataracts in female voles, but not in males. Read more to find out.
Neat! I've read some other stuff a while back when that mutated flower picture from Fukushima was circulating, http://www.snopes.com/nuclear-mutant-daisies/, about some mammalian defects being split hips, so animals would have 2 sets of hind legs.
DeleteI enjoyed reading this post. It was very interesting. I did not know that it was harder for cancer to spread in plants because of their cell wall. Now, if I see any bump on a plant I will know that it probably has cancer, which I wouldn't have known before.
ReplyDeleteThanks Nathalie, I try to keep them interesting so its not too bad to read through them. Do you have any suggestions for things I can improve in future posts?
DeletePretty interesting blog, I've read that there have been new treatments (not so new) for cancer that have been able to show promising results. One of these treatments is immunotherapy. Immunotherapy uses the body's own cells (after tweaking them to recognize cancer) to fight of the nasty disease. Since these are your own cells (not radiology) your body isn't affected with the huge amounts of side effects (loss of hair, higher risk for other cancer, etc..)
ReplyDeleteYeah! I've read a decent amount on that while cruising the web and it seems like a much less harmful treatment than chemotherapy. We will have to wait for the trials to see what new dangers this stuff poses, like could they then go rampant and attack any human cell?
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