full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Elizabeth Murchison: Fighting a contagious cancer

Unscramble the Blue Letters

But how can a cancer spread in a population? Well the final piece of the pzuzle came when we remember how devils behave when they meet each other in the wild. They tend to bite each other, often quite ferociously and usually on the face. We think that cancer cells actually come off the tumor, get into the slvaia. When the deivl bites another devil, it actually physically implants living cancer cells into the next devil, so the tumor continues to grow. So this Tasmanian devil cncear is perhaps the ultimate cancer. It's not constrained by lviing within the body that gave rise to it. It sreapds through the ploupaoitn, has mutations that allow it to edave the immune system, and it's the only cancer that we know of that's threatening an entire species with extinction.

Open Cloze

But how can a cancer spread in a population? Well the final piece of the ______ came when we remember how devils behave when they meet each other in the wild. They tend to bite each other, often quite ferociously and usually on the face. We think that cancer cells actually come off the tumor, get into the ______. When the _____ bites another devil, it actually physically implants living cancer cells into the next devil, so the tumor continues to grow. So this Tasmanian devil ______ is perhaps the ultimate cancer. It's not constrained by ______ within the body that gave rise to it. It _______ through the __________, has mutations that allow it to _____ the immune system, and it's the only cancer that we know of that's threatening an entire species with extinction.

Solution

  1. saliva
  2. devil
  3. puzzle
  4. evade
  5. living
  6. population
  7. cancer
  8. spreads

Original Text

But how can a cancer spread in a population? Well the final piece of the puzzle came when we remember how devils behave when they meet each other in the wild. They tend to bite each other, often quite ferociously and usually on the face. We think that cancer cells actually come off the tumor, get into the saliva. When the devil bites another devil, it actually physically implants living cancer cells into the next devil, so the tumor continues to grow. So this Tasmanian devil cancer is perhaps the ultimate cancer. It's not constrained by living within the body that gave rise to it. It spreads through the population, has mutations that allow it to evade the immune system, and it's the only cancer that we know of that's threatening an entire species with extinction.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
tasmanian devil 19
devil cancer 5
devil population 4
tasmanian devils 3
entire species 2
large tumor 2
develop cancer 2
natural selection 2
life form 2
genetic profiling 2
cancer cells 2
living cancer 2
dog cancer 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
tasmanian devil population 4
tasmanian devil cancer 4

Important Words

  1. behave
  2. bite
  3. bites
  4. body
  5. cancer
  6. cells
  7. constrained
  8. continues
  9. devil
  10. devils
  11. entire
  12. evade
  13. extinction
  14. face
  15. ferociously
  16. final
  17. gave
  18. grow
  19. immune
  20. implants
  21. living
  22. meet
  23. mutations
  24. physically
  25. piece
  26. population
  27. puzzle
  28. remember
  29. rise
  30. saliva
  31. species
  32. spread
  33. spreads
  34. system
  35. tasmanian
  36. tend
  37. threatening
  38. tumor
  39. ultimate
  40. wild