Grant: Project Grant

My overall research goal is to study how mutations in human cancers change the characteristics of normal cells to become like cancer cells. Specifically, I am interested in a family of genes called E2F whose function is abnormally activated in virtually all types of cancers. In my lab, we use fruit flies as a model system to better understand the function of E2F. More than 100 years of fruit fly research has helped scientists to develop sophisticated genetic tools and techniques allowing investigation of various aspects of E2F that are difficult to study in mice. Abnormality in the copy number of the genome is one of the common features of cancer cells. In particular, polyploidy, meaning multiple copies of the genome, can lead to gain or loss of specific chromosomes that can favour cancer development. The fruit fly is an ideal system to study ploidy control since many tissues increase size and mass through polyploidy. We used a modern gene-editing tool called CRISPR/Cas9 and discovered a variant form of E2F in flies that is specifically needed for this process. The goal of this proposal is to use the fruit fly as a model system to investigate the role of E2F in ploidy control. Given the prevalence of E2F deregulation in cancer, our study may reveal a previously unappreciated role of E2F in ploidy regulation during cancer development.