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Terms

Please use the following list to look up the definitions for some of the more important keywords used throughout this site


  • Actinic keratoses - small rough or scaly parts that develop from short-term exposure to the sun which can develop into nonmelanoma squamous skin cancer
  • Anchorage Dependent Growth - needing something to attach to to grow
  • Angiogenesis - the process by which a new network of blood vessels are formed
  • Antioxidants - special nutrients in certain vegetables and fruits that have been shown to protect the body against damage to tissues that occur constantly as a result of normal metabolism
  • Benign - noninvasive
  • Contact Inhibition - stopping growth when touching neighboring cells
  • Differentiated - specialized
  • Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) - the genetic coding for life, consisting of two sugar-phosphate backbones held together by hydgrogen bonds between nitrogenous bases
  • DNA replication - the process by which DNA is duplicated into two identical molecules
  • In vitro - in the test tube
  • Malignant - invasive
  • Melanoma skin cancer - the type of cancer which begins in the melanocytes which produce a skin pigment caused melanin that protects skin from the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation.
  • Metastatic - spreading beyond the original tumor site
  • Morphology - study of shape
  • Nitrogenous bases - the "letters" of DNA of which there are four types: Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine
  • Neoplasm - a tumor, or mass of cells
  • Nicotine - the addicting chemical found in tobacco which can lead to death either by stopping breathing muscles or from lung cancer
  • Nonmelanoma skin cancer - a type of skin cancer that is found in either basal or squamous cells of sun-exposed areas of skin
  • Predisposition - an inherited increased risk for a certain type of cancer
  • Telomerase - an enzyme that repeatedly lengthens the telomeres so that the cells can divide forever
  • Telomere - repeated strings of TTAGGG at the end of each chromosome to decrease the risk of losing information coded for by DNA
  • Transformed - abnormal (would be a cancer cell if in the body)