full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Elizabeth Murchison: Fighting a contagious cancer

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So how come a tumor that arose from the cells of another individual is grwnoig on Jonas' face? Well the next breakthrough came from studying hundreds of tamniasan devil cancers from all around Tasmania. We found that all of these caercns shared the same DNA. Think about that for a minute. That means that all of these cancers actually are the same cancer that arose once from one individual devil, that have broken free of that first devil's body and spread through the entire Tasmanian devil puooiaptln.

But how can a cancer spread in a population? Well the final piece of the puzzle came when we remember how devils behave when they meet each other in the wild. They tend to bite each other, often quite ferociously and usually on the face. We think that caecnr cells actually come off the tumor, get into the saliva. When the dievl bites another devil, it actually physically implants living cancer cells into the next devil, so the tumor continues to grow. So this Tasmanian devil cancer is perhaps the ultimate cancer. It's not constrained by living within the body that gave rise to it. It spreads through the population, has mtntiuoas that allow it to evdae the inumme system, and it's the only cancer that we know of that's threatening an entire species with extinction.

Open Cloze


So how come a tumor that arose from the cells of another individual is _______ on Jonas' face? Well the next breakthrough came from studying hundreds of _________ devil cancers from all around Tasmania. We found that all of these _______ shared the same DNA. Think about that for a minute. That means that all of these cancers actually are the same cancer that arose once from one individual devil, that have broken free of that first devil's body and spread through the entire Tasmanian devil __________.

But how can a cancer spread in a population? Well the final piece of the puzzle came when we remember how devils behave when they meet each other in the wild. They tend to bite each other, often quite ferociously and usually on the face. We think that ______ cells actually come off the tumor, get into the saliva. When the _____ bites another devil, it actually physically implants living cancer cells into the next devil, so the tumor continues to grow. So this Tasmanian devil cancer is perhaps the ultimate cancer. It's not constrained by living within the body that gave rise to it. It spreads through the population, has _________ that allow it to _____ the ______ system, and it's the only cancer that we know of that's threatening an entire species with extinction.

Solution


  1. cancers
  2. cancer
  3. growing
  4. tasmanian
  5. evade
  6. devil
  7. population
  8. mutations
  9. immune

Original Text


So how come a tumor that arose from the cells of another individual is growing on Jonas' face? Well the next breakthrough came from studying hundreds of Tasmanian devil cancers from all around Tasmania. We found that all of these cancers shared the same DNA. Think about that for a minute. That means that all of these cancers actually are the same cancer that arose once from one individual devil, that have broken free of that first devil's body and spread through the entire Tasmanian devil population.

But how can a cancer spread in a population? Well the final piece of the puzzle came when we remember how devils behave when they meet each other in the wild. They tend to bite each other, often quite ferociously and usually on the face. We think that cancer cells actually come off the tumor, get into the saliva. When the devil bites another devil, it actually physically implants living cancer cells into the next devil, so the tumor continues to grow. So this Tasmanian devil cancer is perhaps the ultimate cancer. It's not constrained by living within the body that gave rise to it. It spreads through the population, has mutations that allow it to evade the immune system, and it's the only cancer that we know of that's threatening an entire species with extinction.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
tasmanian devil 19
devil cancer 5
devil population 4
tasmanian devils 3
entire species 2
large tumor 2
develop cancer 2
natural selection 2
life form 2
genetic profiling 2
cancer cells 2
living cancer 2
dog cancer 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
tasmanian devil population 4
tasmanian devil cancer 4

Important Words


  1. arose
  2. behave
  3. bite
  4. bites
  5. body
  6. breakthrough
  7. broken
  8. cancer
  9. cancers
  10. cells
  11. constrained
  12. continues
  13. devil
  14. devils
  15. dna
  16. entire
  17. evade
  18. extinction
  19. face
  20. ferociously
  21. final
  22. free
  23. gave
  24. grow
  25. growing
  26. hundreds
  27. immune
  28. implants
  29. individual
  30. living
  31. means
  32. meet
  33. minute
  34. mutations
  35. physically
  36. piece
  37. population
  38. puzzle
  39. remember
  40. rise
  41. saliva
  42. shared
  43. species
  44. spread
  45. spreads
  46. studying
  47. system
  48. tasmania
  49. tasmanian
  50. tend
  51. threatening
  52. tumor
  53. ultimate
  54. wild