The team ' s experiments focused on gene regulatory mechanisms : specifically , what happens in a cell ' s nucleus when an external stimulus ( heat ) prompts specific genes to activate , and how those activated genes direct the production of proteins that protect the fly against the stress of heating 研究小組的實(shí)驗(yàn)主要關(guān)注基因調(diào)控的機(jī)理:尤其是當(dāng)一個(gè)外部的刺激(比如熱刺激)促進(jìn)某一特定基因激活時(shí),細(xì)胞核里發(fā)生了什么事情,以及這些被激活的基因是如何指導(dǎo)蛋白產(chǎn)物保護(hù)果蠅免遭熱刺激的影響。