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I have yet to receive feedback from my "Ask a Scientist" question which was, "What would cause the CDK and Cyclin to work improperly leading to tumors, mutations, and cancers?"

I have come to learn through reading and through discussion that environmental factors could lead to mutations in the cell which could damage CDK and Cyclin. I suppose "What causes cancer?" is only a step away from the question that I have posed, and this is still something for which scientists are actively searching.

My students are constantly posing questions in my classroom; some that I can answer and some that I cannot. I think the "Ask a Scientist" website would be a great place to direct my students when their questions cannot be answered. I also think that students think that scientists are somewhat fictitious since they never really get a chance to interact with them unless they have parents who are scientists. By having the students pose their own questions to the scientists and get responses from the scientists, they get a chance to see that there really are scientists out there who are experts in their field. This is something that I plan on using in my classroom when my students have questions that I cannot answer. We will post the questions together on the site by using the SmartBoard and will make an event out of reading the responses we get.

Ask a Scientist Website: http://www.askascientist.org/