AI Summary
The researchers at UC Merced, led by Professor Fred Wolf, discovered a cellular process in fruit flies that could impact the understanding of cancer and aging. This mechanism involves how cells regulate protein production during RNA translation. The findings have implications for stress, cancer, and aging. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. This discovery was made possible through collaboration between Wolf's lab and Genentech. The research has broader implications for understanding cellular processes in various organisms and could potentially lead to new insights in cancer and aging research.
Researchers at UC Merced used fruit flies to uncover a cellular process common to many organisms that could dramatically impact the understanding of cancer and aging.
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology Professor Fred Wolf, then-graduate student Sammy Villa and Genentech Vice President and Senior Fellow in Physiological Chemistry and Research Biology Vishva Dixit, discovered a mechanism that cells use to tune how much protein they make through the process of translating RNA into protein.
“This mechanism may be responsible for changes in protein translation in stress, cancer, and aging,” Wolf said.
Their work is detailed in the journal Nature Communications.
Wolf and Dixit have a working relationship dating back to when Wolf was an undergraduate and a technician in Dixit’s research lab at the University of Michigan. They stayed in touch after Wolf went to graduate school at Berkeley and Dixit went to Genentech, a member of the Roche Group and a pioneer in biotech industry.
“Vishva knew I was an expert in Drosophila (fruit fly) genetics, a resource that was not available at Genentech,” Wolf said. Normally, Wolf’s lab focuses on understanding the brain circuits and genes that control animal behavior, particularly how alcohol affects the brain and motivation is represented in it.
He and his researchers use Drosophila, a popular choice among researchers because they are inexpensive to work with, reproduce quickly and abundantly and it is easy to alter their genetics to test ideas. Research centered on the fruit fly has led to many