The broad goal of the Division of Oncovirology is to understand the molecular mechanisms by which these growth regulators induce cancer. The work of the division focuses on 2 groups of oncogenes. The first group codes for nuclear proteins that function as transcriptional activators or transcriptional repressors.
All nuclear proteins coded for oncogenes are transcription factors.
BZip proteins and winged helix proteins form 2 large families of these transcriptional regulators. Important families of the BZip proteins are the AP-1 transcription factors, which include Jun, Fos, and their close relatives, and the ATF proteins, which include CREB and its relatives. Oncogenic transformation induced by these transcription factors raises 2 fundamental questions. The first concerns the protein-protein interactions that mediate the activating signal from transcription factor to basic transcriptional machinery. The second deals with the differentially regulated genes that control the neoplastic phenotype of the cell.