The ability of many insects to walk on vertical smooth surfaces such as glass or even on the ceiling has fascinated biologists for ages and has led to the discovery of highly specialized adhesive organs located at the distal end of the animals' legs. So far, research has primarily focused on structural and ultrastructural investigations leading to a deeper understanding of adhesive organ functionality and to the development of new bioinspired materials. Genetic approaches, e.g. the analysis of mutants, to achieve a better understanding of adhesive organ differentiation, have not been used so far. Here, we describe the first Drosophila melanogaster mutant that develops malformed adhesive organs, resulting in a complete loss of climbing ability on vertical smooth surfaces. Interestingly, these mutants fail to make close contact between the setal tips and the smooth surface, a crucial condition for wet adhesion mediated by capillary forces. Instead, these flies walk solely on their claws. Moreover, we were able to show that the mutation is caused by a P-element insertion into the Su(z)2 gene locus. Remobilization of the P-element restores climbing ability. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the P-element insertion results in an artificial Su(z)2 transcript, which most likely causes a gain of function mutation. We presume that this transcript causes deregulation of yet unknown target genes involved in pulvilli differentiation. Our results nicely demonstrate that the genetically treatable model organism Drosophila is highly suitable for future investigations on adhesive organ differentiation.

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Due to water scarcity and water pollution, the importance of water reuse is increasing more and more. As part of a German research programme on water reuse, the effluent of a wastewater treatment plant in the coastal region of northern Germany was used to investigate the direct treatment of tertiary effluent within the project MULTI-ReUse. A modular constructed pilot system has been operated to optimize different treatment chains producing different water qualities simultaneously. The technological focus was put on membrane technologies, namely ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO), and also biofiltration, adsorption and disinfection were part of the piloting. Beside the development of monitoring strategies for ensuring biological and chemical safe water qualities, the operational stability and the safe transport of water to the consumers were examined. The direct treatment of wastewater is a demanding task due to the lack of dilution and hydraulic retention time in the receiving water (environmental buffer). However, the multiple barrier approach guaranteed constant secure water. Fine adjustments of individual processes were particularly important. A stable operation of the UF could be realized in particular by using more or less intermitting inline coagulation as coating. The RO performance could be improved significantly by using monochloramine as disinfectant to minimize biofouling.