Description

This project involves heredity and the likelihood of disease appearing in later generations. We took a random population and modeled how a breast cancer gene propagates through the population. We used the Star Logo agent-based modeling program to examine each generation and the likelihood of the disease showing up, noting any changes. We also modeled its distribution in populations, among different ages and males and females.

Ultimately we wanted to predict if future generations would have the same disease. The reason that we chose breast cancer as the disease to monitor is because it is widely known. Almost everyone knows someone with breast cancer or has been affected by it. We hope that this may aid or increase the amount of study about breast cancer. We also hope that in some small way this could maybe be a step to one day find a cure to breast cancer.

We expected to be able to explain how breast cancer propagates throughout a population. We also expected to see a slow increase in cases of breast cancer genotype as time goes on because as population increases we expect the number of cases of breast cancer will likewise increase. All in all, the model helped to explain how quickly the breast cancer gene was passed on given different population size and distribution.

Background

Breast Cancer is caused by a mutation of two genes, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2. One out of every 400 people carry this mutated gene. Men and women can develop breast cancer once they have this gene. For every 400 men with breast cancer there are 40,000 women with breast cancer. Men only have a .26 percent chance of developing breast cancer. There are about 212,600 new cases of breast cancer each year and about 40,200 expected deaths. Table 1 shows the percent increase in the risk of women getting breast cancer with age.

Introduction	Table 1	Problem Definition	Problem Solution	Results
Table 2	Figure 1	Conclusions	Recommendations	Acknowledgments