• Question: how do cells inherit diseases?? wuz

    Asked by wuzzy to Alex, Amy, Andy, Georgia, Ollie on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Amy Reeve

      Amy Reeve answered on 10 Jun 2011:

      Cells can get diseases through lots of different ways.

      Some disease are caused by things we do to damage our cells like smoking or drinking too much alcohol.
      Some are caused by bacteria and viruses, like meningitis. The bacteria and viruses invade our cells and damage them.
      Some are caused by cells growing too quickly and where they aren’t meant to, like cancer.
      Some are caused by changes in the DNA of the cell like, cystic fibrosis.
      And for some diseases we don’t understand what causes the damage to the cells…….yet!

    • Photo: Andy MacLeod

      Andy MacLeod answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Every cell in your body has (more or less) the same sequence of DNA, and they all stem ultimately from a single cell that was formed when sperm met egg.

      Hello again Wuz. As the embryo developes into a foetus, cells divide and expand, and follow different paths. Your genes are a set of instructions that give cells instructions on how to develop, and how to function. Chemical messages tell some cells to turn on some genes and not others, so from that one single cell, all our different tissues develop. In the cells that will eventually turn into lungs, only lung genes will be turned on. The same with brain, heart, skin and all of the other tissues.

      You get two copies of each gene, one from mum and one from dad. Sometimes these two copies have different sets of instructions, so they tell the cells to do things differently. Take Cysyic Fibrosis: this is a disease that affects the lungs, and happens when you get a “bad” copy of one gene from mum AND dad. Because all the lung cells have the same DNA, there’s no “good” copy in any of them. This means they can’t clear the mucus out properly (the normal function of the gene), and the lung more open to infection by bacteria.

      There are methods being developed to combat this, but that’s another question. In fact, it’s this one:
      /healthyageingj11-zone/2011/06/if-u-took-a-cell-out-that-has-the-disease-in-it-would-that-stop-the-disease-from-spreadingwuz

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