The Epigenetics research group at the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering, led by Dr. Muhammad Tariq in the Department of Biology, aims to understand how disease like cancer starts in a healthy individual. They aim to discover and understand as many cancer causing genes as possible using fruit flies.
The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has awarded PKR 6.7 million to Dr. Muhammad Tariq to study Mixed Lineage Leukemia (MLL) gene in Drosophila. MLL is a gene which frequently becomes defective in humans suffering from leukemia and Dr. Tariq’s group aims to decode the molecular function of MLL which may contribute to diseases like cancer.
Genes linked to different types of cancers in humans are quite similar to their counterparts in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) which have been used as a model system to understand molecular events during onset of disease.
