How do cells control their growth and division decisions?
During development, cells within multicellular organisms have to “know” when and whether they should divide and what kind of cell they should become. The genes that control these decisions are the same ones that become altered in human tumors. Justin Thackeray‘s research team uses the fruit fly Drosophila to investigate how these regulatory cascades work, focusing on eye and wing development. He also is using the fly system to search for drugs that inhibit these pathways as potentially novel anti-cancer treatments.