Imagine that you are part of a research team that specializes in diagnosing diso
ID: 276613 • Letter: I
Question
Imagine that you are part of a research team that specializes in diagnosing disorders associated with malfunctioning cellular organelles and structures. Medical doctors consult your group to help diagnose particularly difficult cases. In this assignment, you need to provide a cellular explanation for several particularly four difficult cases. In the separate document named "Assignment 3 for submission", you are given 4 difficult cases. Each case you have information for patient history, physical examination, and lab results. Based on these information, what's your diagnosis, more specifically, which organelle is malfunctioning? And what are your rationale for this diagnosis? This scenario and the information provided would not give you an answer but would give you a starting point. After carefully reading this scenario and given information about those 4 difficult cases, you should be able to be more easily analyze these patients and be more easily find outside source via Google, Bing or anything that you choose.Explanation / Answer
Malfunctioning organelle: Mitochondria
Explanation: Mitochondria are responsible for ATP production in the cell. From the lab results we find that low levels of ATP are produced & are unable to maintain homeostasis which results in abnormal cell death.
Rationale for diagnosis: We suspect that this is a case of arsenic poisoning. In arsenic poisoning mitochondria is affected & pyruvate dehydrogenase is inhibited which resulted in decrease pyruvate to acetyl CoA conversion. Ultimately it cause decrease ATP production & also inhibit cellular glucose uptake & fatty acid oxidation. Symptoms include hyperkeratosis, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle atrophy, abdominal pain, weight loss, vertigo (due to dehydration) etc. We also find that her marital relation is stressful & also she recently obtained wealth from lottery. So, it's possible that her husband poisoned her to obtain her wealth.