Discovery of novel oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes via genetic interactions with Drosophila Cbl.

癌症是一种复杂的遗传疾病，由突变的积累导致，这些突变使细胞逃避正常的生长控制。然后，细胞可以无限繁殖，产生肿瘤。我们仍然只知道其中一些突变的性质，以及它们影响的基因。最近，果蝇在发现新的癌症基因和了解它们的功能方面越来越重要。这种生物体的遗传研究历史悠久，最近完成了果蝇整个遗传密码的DNA序列，允许进行大量关于突变如何影响生长和发育的实验。我们已经用果蝇研究了一种特殊的癌症基因v-cbl是如何导致细胞失去生长控制的，现在正在系统地利用这种生物体来发现新的癌症基因。然后，我们将把这些基因映射到人类基因组上，以确定这些基因是否也与人类癌症有关。

Cancer is a complex genetic disease resulting from an accumulation of mutations that allow a cell to escape its normal growth controls. The cell can then multiply indefinitely to produce a tumour. We still only know the nature of some of these mutations, and the genes that they affect. Recently the fruitfly, Drosophila, has gained increasing importance in the discovery of new cancer genes and understanding how they function. The long history of genetic studies with this organism, and the recent completion of the DNA sequence of the entire genetic code of the fruitfly allows a wealth of experiments to be conducted on how mutations affect growth and development. We have used the fruitfly to investigate how a particular cancer gene, v-cbl, causes cells to lose growth control and are now using this organism in a systematic way to discover new cancer genes. We will then map these genes onto the human genome to determine if these genes are also responsible for human cancers.