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 研究小组的实验主要关注基因调控的机理:尤其是当一个外部的刺激(比如热刺激)促进某一特定基因激活时,细胞核里发生了什么事情,以及这些被激活的基因是如何指导蛋白产物保护果蝇免遭热刺激的影响。