Nic Tapon : Apoptosis and Proliferation Control

Goals

Some of our cells, the building blocks of our bodies, are constantly dying because of environmental stresses or ageing. For our organs to function properly, we need to replace these dying cells, which is achieved by some of our cells dividing. However, cell division needs to be tightly restricted, since cancers arise when cells start to behave selfishly and divide out of control. In the Apoptosis and Proliferation Control lab, we are trying to understand how this precise balance between proliferation and cell death is achieved, and how the balance is disrupted in cancer. We use the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism, since flies are easy to maintain and offer many sophisticated tools that allow us to study the function of genes, the set of instructions that tell our cells how to behave, in processes as varied as memory, vision or cancer formation. Despite their relative simplicity, flies are also remarkably similar to humans at the genetic levels, allowing us to translate some of our findings into potential future tools to tackle cancer in people.