Melanoma cells metastasize by leaving the primary tumor and entering the bloodstream, which carries them to distant parts of the body. The cancer cells leave the bloodstream by crossing the capillary basal lamina to enter another tissue. As a cancer researcher you think that somehow preventing the cancer cells from crossing the basal lamina of the blood vessels will inhibit metastasis. You believe that if you block the integrin receptors on the melanoma cells from binding to the extracellular matrix proteins of the basal lamina, then the cells will not be able to adhere to the basal lamina and therefore will not be able to migrate across it. You and your colleagues set about to make antibodies that will bind specifically to the integrins on the surface of the melanoma cells, preventing them from adhering to the proteins in the basal lamina. Once you have these integrin-specific antibodies, you test them on cancer cells in culture to see if they prevent the cells from crossing an artificial basal lamina. To do this, you and your colleagues set up nine cultures of cancer cells. You treat three cultures with the integrin-specific antibody. You treat three more cultures with a non-specific antibody that does not bind to integrins. Three cultures of cells are not treated with antibodies. Which of the following is the independent variable? a. the cells treated with the non-specific antibodiesb. the number of cells attached to the artificial basal laminac. the untreated cellsd. the cells treated with integrin-specific antibodiese. whether or not the cells were treated with antibodies

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