src

The gene src (pronounced "sark," and short for "sarcoma") is found in all animals, and plays an important role in regulating cell division, growth, differentiation, and development. However, src was originally discovered by Peter Vogt, Steve Martin, and Peter Duesberg in 1970 as the gene in Rous sarcoma virus responsible for making infected chicken cells cancerous. (1) This viral oncogene subsequently became known as v-src.

In 1976 J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus discovered that src already existed in healthy chicken cells: they had originally been examining RSV-infected chicken cells to look for the RSV provirus and study how src made chicken cells cancerous, but while performing control experiments, Dominique Stehelin, a French virologist who was visiting the Bishop-Varmus lab at UC Berkeley, discovered that src was ubiquitous in normal, uninfected chicken cells as well. (2) This became known as c-src, or "cellular-src."

c-src became the first known "proto-oncogene," an ordinary gene that has the potential to mutate, causing cancer. This discovery transformed cancer research: whereas in most of the 1960s and 1970s research was focused on finding viral causes of cancer, in the 1980s cancer research shifted to finding genetic risk factors for cancer that are already within the body, as well as environmental factors that could cause somatic mutations.

For more see Scheffler 2019, ch. 9.

Citations:

1. Duesberg, Peter H., G. Steven Martin, and Peter K. Vogt. “Glycoprotein Components of Avian and Murine RNA Tumor Viruses.” Virology 41, no. 4 (August 1970): 631–46. doi:10.1016/0042-6822(70)90428-9.
2. Stehelin, Dominique, Harold E. Varmus, J. Michael Bishop, and Peter K. Vogt. “DNA Related to the Transforming Gene(s) of Avian Sarcoma Viruses Is Present in Normal Avian DNA.” Nature 260, no. 5547 (March 11, 1976): 170–73. doi:10.1038/260170a0.