A Genome-wide Drosophila Screen for Heat Nociception Identifies α2δ3 as an Evolutionarily Conserved Pain Gene

Worldwide, acute and chronic pain affects 20% of the adult population and represents an enormous financial and emotional burden. Using genome-wide neuronal-specific RNAi knock-down in Drosophila, we report a global screen for an innate behavior and identify hundreds of novel genes implicated in heat nociception, including the α2δ-family calcium channel subunit straightjacket (stj). Mice mutant for the stj ortholog CACNA2D3 (α2δ3) also exhibit impaired behavioral heat pain sensitivity. In addition, in humans, α2δ3 SNP variants associate with reduced sensitivity to acute noxious heat and chronic back pain. Functional imaging in α2δ3 mutant mice revealed impaired transmission of thermal pain evoked signals from the thalamus to higher order pain centers. Intriguingly, in α2δ3 mutant mice thermal pain and tactile stimulation triggered strong cross-activation or synesthesia of brain regions involved in vision, olfaction, and hearing

A genome-wide Drosophila epithelial tumorigenesis screen identifies Tetraspanin 29Fb as an evolutionarily conserved suppressor of Ras-driven cancer.

Oncogenic mutations in the small GTPase Ras contribute to ~30% of human cancers. However, Ras mutations alone are insufficient for tumorigenesis, therefore it is paramount to identify cooperating cancer-relevant signaling pathways. We devised an in vivo near genome-wide, functional screen in Drosophila and discovered multiple novel, evolutionarily-conserved pathways controlling Ras-driven epithelial tumorigenesis. Human gene orthologs of the fly hits were significantly downregulated in thousands of primary tumors, revealing novel prognostic markers for human epithelial tumors. Of the top 100 candidate tumor suppressor genes, 80 were validated in secondary Drosophila assays, identifying many known cancer genes and multiple novel candidate genes that cooperate with Ras-driven tumorigenesis. Low expression of the confirmed hits significantly correlated with the KRASG12 mutation status and poor prognosis in pancreatic cancer. Among the novel top 80 candidate cancer genes, we mechanistically characterized the function of the top hit, the Tetraspanin family member Tsp29Fb, revealing that Tsp29Fb regulates EGFR signaling, epithelial architecture and restrains tumor growth and invasion. Our functional Drosophila screen uncovers multiple novel and evolutionarily conserved epithelial cancer genes, and experimentally confirmed Tsp29Fb as a key regulator of EGFR/Ras induced epithelial tumor growth and invasion