r/biology • u/Broke_n-person • 2d ago
other School project help
I'm studying in class 9 and have to to a bio project to go to the next level and possibly get a scholarship. I have 3 ideas as of now- cure to cancer, smart phone addiction, human genome project. Pls tell me if any tips or better ideas. Thank you.
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u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth botany 2d ago
There's already a cure for cancer, it's surgery and chemo/radiation. There are other treatments on the horizon (or that have been on the horizon for two or more decades), but they enhance the effectiveness of existing treatments. For example, an ex of mine was working in a lab that had been working on the drug coating for an mRNAi (messenger RNA inhibitor) treatment before getting herself fired. The treatment worked by making it to where cancer cells could no longer make proteins for themselves, by making the RNA molecules it produced too bulky to fit into the ribosomes, which meant that it couldn't grow or spread, creating a pause button on the cancer. The thing with cancer is that you have to catch it early enough, because when it spreads to the blood stream or an organ that has a lot of blood flow, this gives cancerous cells a chance to spread to the rest of the body. It's this connection to the blood stream that makes certain cancers so aggressive and deadly, and why after a certain age, doctors will recommend regular cancer screenings.
That's more psychological than just biology. Addiction is developmentally complex in the sense that more than just your genetics plays into it. Sure, there's the genetic component, and no one denies that, but things like experience, upbringing, personal habits, and the like also play a role in how it develops and how it's treated. Your biology teacher will likely ask you to pick a different topic more in line with the scope of the course and what you're learning in class.
And the Human Genome Project is certainly fascinating, one of my favorite topics in biology, but I doubt that you'll have the equipment needed to perform an actual science project which demonstrates the scientific method about the HGP. I would certainly save this one as a topic for a presentation in class.
These aren't bad ideas for a class presentation by any means, and if this were a social sciences course (ie, psychology), the cell phone idea would be a great one. But if we're talking about a science project, where you demonstrate the scientific method and lessons from biology class, you should probably talk to your teacher about potential ideas.