Cancer cell nucleus

W.Q. Xu, In situ surface-snhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy exploring molecular changes of drug-treated cancer cell nucleus. Anal. Chem. 87, 2504 (2015)... 

One property expected of the genetic material is a constancy of amount in every cell of the body under every environmental situation. DNA, not RNA or protein, fulfills this expectation. Its content per nucleus is the same in every cell except the germ cells, which have exactly half that found in the somatic cells. Again, this is expected if progeny obtain half their characteristics from each parent. This constancy is so dependable that the measurement of the DNA concentration in a tissue can be used to calculate die number of nuclei and thus the number of cells. This works well for diploid cells such as those of the kidney, but corrections must be made for polyploid mammalian liver or cancer cells. 

Sensitivity of cancerous cells to copper may reflect cell DNA content. Two closely related rat hepatoma cell lines differed in sensitivity to copper toxicity by a factor of four DNA content in each cell line decreased with increasing copper concentrations, but at different rates. Severity of toxicity was associated with increasing accumulations of copper in the cell nucleus and with decreasing DNA (Toussaint and Nederbragt 1993). 

The cell nucleus is another important source of druggable targets. Surprisingly, the nucleus is not as important to the survival of an individual cell as are many of the cytoplasmic organelles. A cell can live without its nucleus, it just cannot reproduce. (Mature adult human red blood cells, for example, do not have nuclei.) On the other hand, a cell cannot live without its mitochondria. Therefore, the cell nucleus is an important structure to target when designing drugs for diseases in which one wishes to stop cellular reproduction (e.g., cancer, viral or bacterial infections). 

The Clinical-Molecular Interface The Cell Nucleus and Cancer Treatment... 

Kam et al. [38-40] SW CNT-r cytochrome C,RNA, DNA CNT transferred cytochrome C to the cancer cells accumulation of SW CNT-RNA conjugates in cytoplasm and nucleus of HeLa cells... 

DNA within the cell nucleus is altered, giving rise to cancer. 

The effect of prolonged fixation with formaldehyde on the antigenicity of the nucleus may differ from that of the cytoplasm. This phenomenon is exemplified by Bcl-2 and Bax, members of the same family of proteins involved in apoptosis regulation these proteins reside in the cytoplasm as well as in the nucleus. It was recently demonstrated that prolonged fixation with formaldehyde alone irreversibly reduced nuclear or mitotic Bcl-2 immunoreactivity even after heat-mediated antigen retrieval in monolayers of MCF-7 human breast cancer cells (Hoetelmans et al., 2001). 

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