Biochemistry Question- Hexokinase

[kingbm]

1. In the laboratory, mice can be genetically engineered to express the transgene called NeuT. This gene is involved in the development of breast cancers. In the figure below, please explain the graph and what happens when HK2 is knocked out.

I'm very confused and thing to help understand the graph or to help start me off on this question would be great!

 

[Function]

Sounds like a homework question to me truth be told ... But it's a mod's job to yammer about that.

 

Sorry, how did I miss that this post was already in the homework help section

 

Is it possible to provide a larger image? I can't really read the superscripts at NeuT;HK2 in the legend, but if my eyes don't trick me too hard, it seems like the red graph illustrates the tumor size in function of the time (weeks) when Hk2 is knocked out (-/- stands for knockout of the gene on both chromosomes, if I'm not mistaken).

 

I hope this may already help you in understanding the graphs? If blue means intact genes and red means KO of both genes, then it should not be too hard for you to explain the effect of KO of the genes on tumor growth (on a significance level alpha > 0.006, but that aside).

 

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Besides, it's not too hard to find answers to this type of questions just by using Google: you might want to look it up first in the future.

E.g. query "knockout hk2 breast cancer" already gives you some articles on PubMed; if you're lucky, the function of the protein and the effect of what you're trying to find is already given in the title.

 

Here, I directly find the article "Hexokinase 2 Is Required for Tumor Initiation and Maintenance and Its Systemic Deletion Is Therapeutic in Mouse Models of Cancer"

 

Should also give you an open way to answer that question of yours.

 

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Cheers!

 

F

Edited July 17, 2016 by Function

[kingbm]

Thank you very much those are some great tips and I think I'm on the right track now!