This may be the clue that Dr. Ceci needs to identify other oncogenes that interact with TPL2 to bring about abnormal cell growth. In this facility, mice are generated with experimentally altered genes, hence the term transgenic. The latter are known as knockout mice. Careful histopathological and physiological studies of these mice and their offspring disclose much about the function of the wild-type gene and its oncogenic counterpart. Mice with the wild-type Tpl2 transgene exhibit no detectable abnormal characteristics.
Gene therapies lie at the frontier of cancer research.
Dr. Ceci works that frontier in his transgenic mouse studies. His research seeks to identify and characterize novel oncogenes that cooperate with Tpl2 and other genes that are necessary to turn on malignant cell growth. His role in the Transgenic Mouse Core Facility assists other investigators following the trail of other oncogenes and the proteins they encode. Ceci, J.D., Patriotis, C., Tsatsanis, C., Markris, A., Kovatch, R.M., Swing, D.A., Jenkins, N.A., Tsichlis, P.N. and Copeland, N.G. Tpl2 is an oncogenic kinase that is activated by carboxy-terminal truncation. Ceci, J.D., Matsuda, Y., Grubber, J. M., Jenkins, N.A., Copeland, N.G., and Chapman, V.M. Interspecific backcrosses provide an important new tool for centromere mapping of mouse chromosomes.