The fly facility at CanCell hosted Tiril Garshol, high school student at Oslo By Steinerskole, for a research project related to genetics this winter. Tiril has learnt to manipulate fruit flies, identify phenotypic traits and perform crosses to study genetic inheritance, supervised by Helene Knævelsrud.
The fly facility is used by the CanCell groups led by Tor Erik Rusten, Harald Stenmark and Jorrit Enserink to study cancer-related signaling pathways, cell behavior and tumor-host interactions in this powerful model organism. Fruit fly husbandry, performing crosses and following phenotypic traits to combine cancer-related mutations with other genetic tools are part of the daily work at the fly facility and the basis of new discoveries towards reprogramming cancer cells.