Overview

Throughout this module, we have observed that form follows function. All cells are made up of a similar composition of subcellular structures, yet size, shape, and texture varies tremendously and are directly correlated to what they do. Cancer is a pathological condition that occurs when cells no longer behave within normal parameters. This assignment will address how we can begin to understand cancer and treatments through the study of cells and tissues.

You should spend approximately 3.5 hours on this assignment.

Instructions

1. Choose a membrane type from the following types: mucous, serous, cutaneous, synovial.
2. Prepare a written paper of at least 1000 words that includes:
   1. Describe structure and function of your chosen tissue type, include locations in body and which four of the main tissue types it belongs to.
   2. Identify a specific type of cancer that affects your chosen tissue type and discuss pathological changes in your chosen tissue type at both gross and histological levels.
   3. Describe how subcellular features disrupt the cell cycle, which leads to development of the cancer type identified in part B.
   4. Examine how current therapies attempt to address this disruption in the cell cycle.
   5. Differentiate how the body responds differently to a tissue injury vs cancer.
3. Your paper should be formatted as a proper research paper with an introduction and conclusion. Do not simply follow the bullet points above, but really think about what you have learned and how that relates to other material we have covered, and knowledge you have from other courses you may have taken. The Research and Report assignments in this course are capstone assignments for each module. You should be integrating everything that you learned in the textbook, explorations, discussions, and lab activities into your papers.
4. All references must be cited using APA Style format. Please refer to the CCCOnline APA Citation Toolkit. 
5. Use what you have learned from this module to complete the assignment. In some cases, you may need to conduct additional research. See the Grading and Evaluation section in the Syllabus module for links to research databases in the CCCOnline Library.  

1. You are asked to pick a specific type of cancer that affects one of the four membrane types listed. Skin cancer is a group of cancers that impact the epidermis and is not a specific type of cancer. If you wish to discuss cutaneous cancers, you can chose from basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, merkel cell cancer, and melanoma, etc.

2. Be sure to discuss what happens with your specific cancer type at both the gross (i.e., what you can see with the naked eye) and histological (i.e., what you can see with a microscope) levels.

3. You are also asked to discuss subcellular features that disrupt the cell cycle. These subcellular features can be anything from a mutation in a proto-oncogene to a missing cyclin/cyclin-dependent kinase, from a deleted tumor suppressor gene to a mutation in a protein necessary for the apoptosis pathway. 

All sources should be reliable websites or online scholarly articles.