Question: Missed you in the chat room today :(i was wondering whyy ? ( eg : doing some research ect) i wonted to ask you a few questions :Q1: What are you going to do after im a scientist get me out of here ? Q2: Where does the cancer go after you have been cured ? Q3 : What are tumous & what are they made of ? Q4: What are you going to do with the prize money if you win ??? x :) :P Thanks............

Mariam Orme answered on 16 Jun 2010:

Yeah, I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it this afternoon, there was a meeting that I had to go to. I hope you enjoyed chatting with the other scientists though.

OK, I’ll try to answer your questions:

Q1
After I’m a scientist get me out of here, I will go back to my normal life and be able to spend more time on my research instead of answering questions online! I’ll be sad when it’s over though, I’m really enjoying it so far.

Q3 (it makes more sense for me to answer this one before Q2!)
Tumours are a mass of cells from your own body that have picked up mutations. Let me explain that a bit more… Your body is made up of trillions of cells, which have to divide every now and then to replace cells that die or to repair damage to the body. Each cell contains a copy of your DNA, and so when a cell divides, the DNA has to be replicated (one cell becomes two, so there have to be two copies of the DNA). Generally, the DNA gets copied accurately, but occasionally mistakes slip through, and that’s called a mutation. Most mutations are harmless and don’t actually make any difference, but some mutations make the cell grow and divide more than it should, and so you end up with a load of mutant, cancerous cells: a tumour.

Q2
Often, doctors will operate on a patient to remove a tumour, in which case it goes into the hospital’s waste disposal! But after that, patients will usually have to be treated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy incase there are any cancerous cells left behind. What these treatments do is to kill the cancer cells . And like other dead cells in your body, the dead cancer cells get ‘eaten up’ by special cells called macrophages (whose job is to go around the body cleaning up debris like dead cells).

Q4 I still haven’t thought properly about exactly what I would do with the money, because I need to spend quite a lot of time looking into the options. But basically, I would buy some equipment that I would take to schools, to give students the opportunity to do some sort of experiment that they couldn’t normally do. I would want it to be something fun, but also safe. I’ve thought about buying a little microscope and portable set-up for anaesthetising my flies, so students could get to look at them, but I’m not sure how much fun that would actually be! If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

Thanks very much for your questions, I hope I’ve answered them ok, but if not please do ask me to explain things better and hopefully I will do!