昆虫细胞生长之调控机制的探讨

细胞生长调控机制的探讨是近年来发育生物学中一个十分热门的研究领域。生物体内之细胞是如何得知何时该生长及分裂?何时该停止生长?何时该死亡?对生物体来说至关重大。研究显示调控细胞生长之信息传递系统出现差错,将导致生长异常,从而产生组织细胞之异常增生而诱发癌症或产生其它重大疾病。而人类也只有在充分理解细胞生长之机制的基础上,我们才能了解癌症等重大疾病发生的细胞生物学基础。在探讨细胞生长调控机制的研究中,昆虫特别是果蝇Drosophilamelanogaster一直是一个十分理想的实验材料。文章介绍了如何从昆虫看细胞之生长调控机制。

Studies on control mechanism of insect cell growth

The study on control mechanism of cell growth is one of the hot topics in developmental biology. It is important for an organism how to know when cells will start (or stop) growth (or division). Recent studies have begun to clarify how the signal transduction affects cell growth and final size in insects. The results showed that the deficiency in insulin (or growth factor) signal transduction will lead to the abnormality of growth, cancer as well as other big diseases. Thus the clearer understanding of cellular mechanism underlying cell growth will provide us the basis of cell biology to explore the reasons of big diseases including cancer. Insects, especially Drosophila melanogaster, are ideal models for studying control mechanism of cell growth. This article will review recent progress on this topic.