Drosophila tumor suppressor genes have been shown to cause tumors in the larval brain and imaginal discs. Tumors in the brain have been determined to arise due to a disruption in neuroblast/neuron proliferation and differentiation. In the tumor suppressor gene, lethal giant larvae, disruption of apical basal polarity of the neuroblast stem cell leads to an increase in neuroblast self-renewal at the expense of ganglion mother cells and neurons. Tumors from lethal giant larvae mutants are metastatic upon transplantation into adult Drosophila hosts. The goal of the project is to determine the factors that are responsible and required for metastasis of a subset of the tumor cells. We have undertaken a deficiency screen to study the Drosophila genome in order to determine regions which contain genes important for metastasis. Preliminary results indicate the region 3L 69F6-70A2 contains one or more genes important for metastasis and/or tumorigenesis of lethal giant larvae tumors. Furthermore, we are developing GFP-marked tumor suppressor mutant stains in order to study metastatic cells compared to non-metastatic primary tumor cells in Drosophila using genome arrays.
