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0:00
Welcome to this
introductory lecture
on cancer metabolism.
My name is Dr. Sophia Lunt,
and I'm a professor in
the Department of biochemistry
and molecular biology
at Michigan State University.
0:15
Life as we know it,
ranging from humans to
bacteria to plants,
would not be possible
without metabolism.
Metabolism is often
represented as
a big, complicated pathway map
like the one shown on the
center of this slide.
But if you boil it down,
metabolism is a process
in which you take
in nutrients like food, water,
and oxygen and convert them into
the basic building
blocks of life,
DNA, RNA, protein,
lipids, and energy.
Metabolism has many
applications in
health and medicine,
including drug efficacy.
How well drugs work
or do not work
often depends on metabolism.
Also, obesity and diabetes,
which are growing problems
in the United States as well as
many other developed
countries, and cancer.
In fact, cancer cells have
different metabolism
compared to normal cells,
and I will be discussing some
of those differences
in this lecture.
1:17
Metabolism is defined as
the biochemical processes that
occur within a living organism.
It allows an organism
to take nutrients from
its environment and use
them for maintenance,
growth, and reproduction.
Enzymes mediate many of
these metabolic reactions.
1:39
Metabolism encompasses
all reactions
within a cell or an organism,
and can be divided
into two parts;
Anabolism, which is
the synthesis of
larger macromolecules,
and catabolism,
which is the breakdown
of organic molecules.
