The Mechanism of Myc Function in Cell Proliferation and Cancer

每三个人中就有一个会在一生中患上癌症。我研究癌症是如何产生的，因为要有效地治疗它，了解我们是如何患上这种疾病是至关重要的。一种名为Myc的蛋白质在许多人类癌症中扮演着重要角色。我的研究问的是，Myc如何增加我们患癌症的风险？20多年前，Myc被发现是一种转录因子，这意味着它将编码特定基因的DNA转录成消息。这些信息编码合成组成细胞的蛋白质。我们想知道Myc转录了哪些基因来驱动癌症。MYC实际上是一种相当弱的转录因子，因此我开始寻找MyC可能具有的其他功能。这让我发现，Myc对基因进行了两次调节--它不仅增加了产生的信息量，还增加了每条信息产生的蛋白质的量。这一发现意味着我们错过了Myc激活的许多重要基因。我想找到Myc激活的新基因，并发现它们在癌细胞中的作用。这些基因将成为癌症治疗的新靶点。

One in three people will have cancer during their lifetime. I investigate how cancer arises, because to treat it effectively, it is critical to know how we get the disease. A protein called Myc plays a prominent role in many human cancers. My research asks, How does Myc increase our risk of cancer? Over 20 years ago Myc was found to be a transcription factor, which means that it transcribes the DNA that codes for particular genes into messages. Those messages code for the synthesis of proteins that make up the cell. We want to know which genes Myc transcribes to drive cancer. Myc is actually a rather weak transcription factor, and I therefore started to search for other functions that Myc might have. This led me to discover that Myc regulates genes twice - not only does it increase the amount of message produced, it also increases the amount of protein produced from each message. This finding means that we have missed many of the significant genes that Myc activates. I want to find the novel Myc-activated genes and discover what they do in cancer cells. These genes will be new targets for cancer therapies.