Fruit Flies in Biomedical Research

Abstract

Many scientists complain that the current funding situation is dire. Indeed, there has been an overall decline in support in funding for research from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Within the Drosophila field, some of us question how long this funding crunch will last as it demotivates principal investigators and perhaps more importantly affects the longterm career choice of many young scientists. Yet numerous very interesting biological processes and avenues remain to be investigated in Drosophila, and probing questions can be answered fast and efficiently in flies to reveal new biological phenomena. Moreover, Drosophila is an excellent model organism for studies that have translational impact for genetic disease and for other medical implications such as vector-borne illnesses. We would like to promote a better collaboration between Drosophila geneticists/biologists and human geneticists/ bioinformaticians/clinicians, as it would benefit both fields and significantly impact the research on human diseases.

The Mapping and Characterization of <i>Cruella (Cru)</i>, a Novel Allele of <i>Capping Protein α (Cpa)</i>, Identified from a Conditional Screen for Negative Regulators of Cell Growth and Cell Division

“…As shown in Figure 1 some over a cell lethal mutation on 2R (;FRT42D, M (2)). The result of this experiment was a complete pupal lethality, suggesting that Cru plays a necessary role in head and eye development.…”

“…As a result of evolutionary conservation, information gleaned from the study of Drosophila can often be applied to improve both our understanding of the genetic causes of human diseases and our approaches to combating such diseases [1] [2]. One such gene example is hippo (hpo), a gene involved in regulation of apoptosis and cell division in Drosophila, which has two human homologs, Mst 1 and Mst 2.…”

The promises of neurodegenerative disease modeling

“…Among these three animal models, D. melanogaster stands out as an invaluable organism to study human diseases [26][27][28].…”

RNAi-Based Techniques for the Analysis of Gene Function in Drosophila Germline Stem Cells

“…Like humans, Drosophila have a variety of tissue-resident stem cell populations that are critical for the continued production of specialized progeny [8–12]. The ease with which Drosophila are reared, the broad variety of genetic tools for cell-specific gene manipulation, and the high degree of conservation between many human and Drosophila cell signaling pathways make fruit flies a powerful model organism for biomedical research [13]. Drosophila are well-suited for rapid, large-scale genetic screens [14], and the availability of transgenic libraries, stock centers, and genome and bioinformatics tools [15–18] make them an efficient and cost-effective resource to study stem cell biology within the context of the whole organism.…”