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 研究小組的實驗主要關注基因調控的機理:尤其是當一個外部的刺激(比如熱刺激)促進某一特定基因激活時,細胞核里發生了什么事情,以及這些被激活的基因是如何指導蛋白產物保護果蠅免遭熱刺激的影響。