Essay Sample on Wayward Cells

Introduction

In the essay 'Wayward Cells,' Kerry Mertz likens a room to a human body whereby; inside that room, there are a group of people that are performing different task in order for them to achieve a set objective. In this essay, the body cells and organs are taken to be a group of people. The cells in the human body work in a coordinated manner each performing its functions as designed. The essay also illustrates a person who abandons working on the station where is placed and goes ahead to disrupt other people in the room who are performing their task effectively. The writer states that this person uses his tools to recreate others who resembles him and as a result, they increase in number and continue with the interference of other peoples work. As a result, the work is affected to an extent it comes to a stop. The writer uses cancer cells to depict this kind of person. When an individual is healthy the body carry out its function in a very proper way as the cells and other body organs are carrying out their actions as are they are designed to. When the cell stops functioning in a proper way the scientist refers to that as undifferentiating which implies that the cell has lost its relevance in the body. Just like the person in the room decides to do contrary to what other people are doing also the cell starts to act in a different way, the reason as to why this occurs cannot be clearly stated.

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The cause of the issue could be a damage of DNA code or by a harmful environmental condition such as cigarette smoke, or asbestos (Greenstein, 2016). The undifferentiated can affect the function of other cells in two ways. Either by not performing its function as required in its DNA and not dividing itself. Most healthy cells divide at a faster rate, but their division is controlled. And as they die of the body gets to reproduce of the same kind as many as they could. On another hand the cancer cells do not have this control, they are being divided on a faster rate with no stopping point. A feature commonly referred to as autonomy. These cells produced to possess the same characteristic as the 'parent cell' hence causing more harm to the body. The many cells produced develops to a growth known as a tumor. The tumor can grow to a very big size that it takes up the space needed by other cells for their proper functioning. The tumor can also move from its original place and spread throughout the body creating new tumors and hence becoming life-threatening.

Cancer cells can also be harmful to the body by performing the task not assigned by the DNA, cancer cells are termed to be so chronic since they act contrary to the body function. Luckily out of the scientific research the scientist has aided the doctors by inventing a chemical that is used to kill the fast-dividing cells, unfortunately, the chemical does not discriminate, it kills both the healthy and unhealthy cells. And this causes negative effects such as damaging the rapidly-growing hair follicles (Greenstein, 2016).

The Water Cycle

The water cycle is a perfect replica process of what is observed in the essay 'Wayward Cells,' by Kerry Mertz. The hydrosphere is the discontinuous storage of water including fresh, salt or solid on the surface of the earth such as oceans, lakes, and seas. The water storage in rivers and lakes and atmosphere is very little therefore the water circulation from rain- river - ocean-atmosphere becomes rapid and the amount of water from the land into the oceans is equal to water the total mass of water stored on lakes and river. The water cycle, therefore, correlates with the hydrosphere. Water plays an important role in the water cycle.

The biogeochemical properties of hydrosphere include; rainwater which contains dissolved gases and salts, fine ground particulate material, organic substances, and bacteria (Devia, Ganasri, & Dwarakish, 2015). The sources of these materials are oceans, soils, fertilizers, air pollution, and fossil fuel combustion. Rains in the oceanic island have dissolved constituents. The high salt content of rain near the coastline are not volatile and must be expected that the process of evaporation of water from the seas would filter out the salts. In some instances, the ratios of ions in rainwater deviate significantly from those in seawater. Mechanisms proposed for this fractionation are, for example, the escape of chlorine as gaseous hydrogen chloride (HCl) from sea salt aerosol with a consequent enrichment in sodium and bubbling and thermal diffusion. In addition, the release of biogenic gases such as dimethyl sulfide (DMS) from the sea surface and its subsequent reaction in the oceanic atmosphere to sulfate can change rainwater ion ratios with respect to seawater. Soil particles also can influence rainwater composition. Rainfall over the southwestern United States contains relatively high sulfate concentrations because of sulfate-bearing particles that have been blown into the atmosphere from desert soils. Rain near industrial areas commonly contains high contents of sulfate, nitrate, and carbon dioxide (CO2) largely derived from the burning of coal and oil (Devia et al., 2015).

In this process, the contamination of water and air disrupts the normal formation of rain in the process of the water cycle leading to the formation of the acid rain. Just as wayward cells disrupted normal functions of other cells, acid rain in this case also disrupts the normal functions of key players in the water cycle process such as trees, seas, among others. The disruption has significant consequences not only to natural components but also to man-made components such as buildings and constructions (Devia et al., 2015).

References

Devia, G. K., Ganasri, B. P., & Dwarakish, G. S. (2015). A review of hydrological models. Aquatic Procedia, 4, 1001-1007.

Greenstein, J. P. (2016). Biochemistry of cancer. Elsevier.

Mertz, K. (Unknown). Wayward Cells.