Cancer is a malfunction of cellular growth control. The discovery of oncogenes, first in transforming retroviruses, and later in human and animal tumors, may have uncovered the key to understanding one of the most elusive subjects of basic cell biology, namely, the controlling mechanisms of cell growth. The ras gene family encodes a group of closely related 21,000 dalton (p21) proteins with special affinity for guanine nucleotides. Other cellular proteins with similar biochemical properties, collectively known as G-proteins, include the regulatory G proteins of adenylate cyclase, the alpha subunit of transducin of retina rod outer segments, the recently identified rho gene proteins, and perhaps also the elongation factors, EF-Tu and EF-G, of the protein synthesis system. These G-proteins have roles in cellular signal transduction; by analogy p21 may have a similar cellular function in mediating the flow of growth control signals. Recent progress in the cloning and sequencing of these genes, overproduction of gene products in E. coli, protein engineering, detailed biochemical characterization, and the molecular structure determined by high resolution X-ray crystallography, have helped to elucidate in great detail the structure and function of p21 ras proteins. p21 appears to have a small membrane binding domain at the C-terminus, which contains a palmitylation site at cysteine-186, four amino acid residues from the end. Separated by a variable "hinge" region, most of the rest of ras amino acid sequences are highly conserved in nature. Four regions of extensive sequence homology among G-proteins constitute the GTP/GDP binding domain. In the crystal structure of EF-Tu, four peptide loops connecting beta sheets and alpha helices form the pocket for binding GDP. Studies using site-directed mutagenesis and immnochemical probes, indicate that the basic structure of the GDP binding site is conserved between p21 and EF-Tu. Furthermore, these studies also conclude that GTP binding is crucial for p21 ras cellular function. Although the precise target molecules for p21 are still unknown, the finding of the on/off switch function for ras genes have provided a better understanding of the mechanism of proto-oncogene activation, and may also provide further impetus to explore means of cancer intervention by interfering with the switch function.