UC Merced Connect: Fruit flies aid in cancer research

Fruit flies, with short lives and genes that are easy to manipulate, make excellent models for innovative research into cancer.

Many of the genes that cause disease in humans have an equivalent gene in the genetic code of fruit flies, and UC Merced professor Mike Cleary is using the tiny bugs in his cutting-edge work in cancer biology. He is just one of several UC Merced researchers representing the campus' mission to pursue innovative solutions to major health issues.

Cleary, a member of UC Merced's stem cell consortium, is studying the fruit flies' neural stem cells as a model for stem cell self-renewal and differentiation. These cells, called neuroblasts produce the diversity of cell types found in the nervous system.

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that are capable of dividing and creating new cells.

Most of the time, stem cells are creating healthy cells for a person's body. However, they can start creating the wrong cells, causing cancer to develop.

Increasingly, research suggests altered gene expression can cause stem cells to become cancerous. Researchers are still working to understand the behavior of stem cells and how they make self-renewal versus differentiation choices.

Fruit flies' short lifespan and rapid reproduction allows researchers to quickly see how gene manipulations affect a fly's development, Cleary said. Similar experiments involving mice can take up to six months.

Overexpressing or removing genes can cause mutations, and large numbers of flies with different mutations can then be screened for brain defects, such as over-proliferation of neuroblasts (causing brain tumors) or decreased proliferation (causing under-developed brains).

Understanding the regulation of neuroblast proliferation will likely be beneficial for preventing and combating cancer, Cleary said.

"It could hopefully provide a target for human therapies," he said.

Cleary did his undergraduate studies at UC Davis and was a graduate student at Stanford University. He said the University of California is the best public university system, so he was eager to apply for an opening at UC Merced.

He praised the graduate and undergraduate students working in his lab for taking charge of the research.

"They're doing a great job," he said. "It gets easier as the lab becomes more self-sufficient."

Community-based research

UC Merced this week will hold its first conference highlighting research that directly has a connection to the surrounding community.

The Conference on Community Research and Scholarship will feature nearly a dozen professors presenting on topics such as obesity, solar energy and literature.

The conference is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday in the California Room on campus. It's open to the public, though registration is required. Visit communityresearch.ucmerced.edu for more. Registration is open until noon today.

UC Davis professor Jonathan London, the keynote speaker, will give a talk, "The Engaged University at a Crossroads: A Place of Opportunities and Dangers."

UC Merced Connect is a collection of news items written by the university's Office of Communications. To contact the communications team, e-mail communications@ucmerced.edu.