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Cancer In Fruit Flies Essay

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The Tallahassee Democrat News, a site that is part of the USA Today Network, reports current news on scientific advancements. The article, Fruit Flies Yield Clues On Cancerous Tumor Hotspots, offers an overview of the research done by Yoichiro Tamori, Wu-Min Deng, and Emiko Suzuki, who have discovered that epithelial tissues in fruit flies can be cancerous. The reasoning behind studying fruit flies is because, “Flies and humans have a lot in common in terms of genes and pathways for developing cancer” (Haughney). In the article, the researchers explain that the tumor hot spots, which appear to be near the epithelial tissues, found in fruit flies have also been found in several human cancers, “These tumor hotspots all involved an oncogenic signaling pathway that have been shown to play a part in many types of human cancers” (Haughney). However, the scientists do assure the reader that in distinct areas of the epithelial tissue there are tumor cold spots. Without a doubt, this is the beginning of a prolonged experiment, “The more we know, the better we can get at treating and preventing cancer” (Haughney). …show more content…

It is stated in the article that humans and fruit flies share similar genes, thus the scientists conducted the experiment on fruit flies, therefore, it is of high importance to implement this new data to help treat and prevent human cancers. If research continues to prosper and scientists like Tamori, Deng, and Suzuki extend their experiment from fruit flies to humans, there is a possibility that they may find factors that cause the development of tumors in humans. Tamori, Deng, and Suzuki were able to generate a thesis regarding the part epithelial tissues play in the development of tumors in fruit flies and then transcribe that information and correlate it to tumors in

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