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Research Study on the Occurance of Changes in HL-60 Cells

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HL-60 cells are cells that are capable of differentiating into many different types of cells. Cell differentiation is a biological process where a more specialized cell is formed from a less specialized cell type. This differentiation can be induced by using specific chemical agents such as dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) or phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA). Cellular differentiation is important because if we can understand how differentiation can be induced, we can apply those mechanisms to situations where terminal differentiation in cells has occurred. In this experiment, our goal is to view the different changes that will occur in HL-60 cells when we induce this type of differentiation. More specifically, we are focusing on mRNA transcript production in the HL-60 cells that have been treated with DMSO or PMA. We want to focus on this because it will allow us to see changes in gene expression due to signal transduction mechanisms that are induced by the PMA and DMSO in these cells after they have been treated with these chemical agents (Cirtain, Middelstadt, Higgins, & Polson, 2014). Signal transduction in this experiment happens when PMA binds to a surface receptor and stimulates the upregulation of the secondary messenger in the signal transduction pathway, which leads to the protein product in the cell’s nucleus. This in turn stimulates specific transcription factor binding on the DNA, which results in an increase in transcription of MMP-9 (Cirtain et al, 2014).

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