scholarly journals The secret lives of Drosophila flies

eLife ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese Ann Markow
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
Wild Populations

Flies of the genus Drosophila, and particularly those of the species Drosophila melanogaster, are best known as laboratory organisms. As with all model organisms, they were domesticated for empirical studies, but they also continue to exist as wild populations.Decades of research on these flies in the laboratory have produced astounding and important insights into basic biological processes, but we have only scratched the surface of what they have to offer as research organisms. An outstanding challenge now is to build on this knowledge and explore how natural history has shaped D. melanogaster in order to advance our understanding of biology more generally.

Apoptosis and development

2003 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 11-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin V McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Mammalian Cells ◽  
Cell Number ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
Nematode Caenorhabditis Elegans ◽  
Apoptotic Pathway ◽  
Genetic Pathways ◽  
Evolutionarily Conserved ◽  
Multicellular Organisms

Apoptosis is an evolutionarily conserved process used by multicellular organisms to developmentally regulate cell number or to eliminate cells that are potentially detrimental to the organism. The large diversity of regulators of apoptosis in mammalian cells and their numerous interactions complicate the analysis of their individual functions, particularly in development. The remarkable conservation of apoptotic mechanisms across species has allowed the genetic pathways of apoptosis determined in lower species, such as the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, to act as models for understanding the biology of apoptosis in mammalian cells. Though many components of the apoptotic pathway are conserved between species, the use of additional model organisms has revealed several important differences and supports the use of model organisms in deciphering complex biological processes such as apoptosis.

scholarly journals Partitiviruses Infecting Drosophila melanogaster and Aedes aegypti Exhibit Efficient Biparental Vertical Transmission

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (20) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun T. Cross ◽  
Bernadette L. Maertens ◽  
Tillie J. Dunham ◽  
Case P. Rodgers ◽  
Ali L. Brehm ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Virus Infection ◽  
Aedes Aegypti ◽  
Vertical Transmission ◽  
Horizontal Transmission ◽  
Model Organism ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT Partitiviruses are segmented, multipartite double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) viruses that until recently were only known to infect fungi, plants, and protozoans. Metagenomic surveys have revealed that partitivirus-like sequences are also commonly associated with arthropods. One arthropod-associated partitivirus, galbut virus, is common in wild populations of Drosophila melanogaster. To begin to understand the processes that underlie this virus’s high global prevalence, we established colonies of wild-caught infected flies. Infection remained at stably high levels over 3 years, with between 63 and 100% of individual flies infected. Galbut virus infects fly cells and replicates in tissues throughout infected adults, including reproductive tissues and the gut epithelium. We detected no evidence of horizontal transmission via ingestion, but vertical transmission from either infected females or infected males was ∼100% efficient. Vertical transmission of a related partitivirus, verdadero virus, that we discovered in a laboratory colony of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes was similarly efficient. This suggests that efficient biparental vertical transmission may be a feature of at least a subset of insect-infecting partitiviruses. To study the impact of galbut virus infection free from the confounding effect of other viruses, we generated an inbred line of flies with galbut virus as the only detectable virus infection. We were able to transmit infection experimentally via microinjection of homogenate from these galbut-only flies. This sets the stage for experiments to understand the biological impact and possible utility of partitiviruses infecting model organisms and disease vectors. IMPORTANCE Galbut virus is a recently discovered partitivirus that is extraordinarily common in wild populations of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster. Like for most viruses discovered through metagenomics, most of the basic biological questions about this virus remain unanswered. We found that galbut virus, along with a closely related partitivirus found in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, is transmitted from infected females or males to offspring with ∼100% efficiency and can be maintained in laboratory colonies over years. This efficient transmission mechanism likely underlies the successful spread of these viruses through insect populations. We created Drosophila lines that contained galbut virus as the only virus infection and showed that these flies can be used as a source for experimental infections. This provides insight into how arthropod-infecting partitiviruses may be maintained in nature and sets the stage for exploration of their biology and potential utility.

scholarly journals Partitiviruses infecting Drosophila melanogaster and Aedes aegypti exhibit efficient biparental vertical transmission

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun T. Cross ◽  
Bernadette L. Maertens ◽  
Tillie J. Dunham ◽  
Case P. Rodgers ◽  
Ali L. Brehm ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Virus Infection ◽  
Aedes Aegypti ◽  
Vertical Transmission ◽  
Horizontal Transmission ◽  
Virus Transmission ◽  
Model Organism ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
The Impact

AbstractPartitiviruses are segmented, multipartite dsRNA viruses that until recently were only known to infect fungi, plants, and protozoans. Metagenomic surveys have revealed that partitivirus-like sequences are also commonly associated with arthropods. One arthropod-associated partitivirus, galbut virus, is extraordinarily common in wild populations of Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies. To begin to understand the processes that underlie this virus’s high global prevalence, we established colonies of wild-caught infected flies. Infection remained at stably high levels over three years, with between 63-100% of individual flies infected. Galbut virus infects fly cells and replicates in tissues throughout infected adults, including reproductive tissues and the gut epithelium. We detected no evidence of horizontal transmission via ingestion but vertical transmission from either infected females or infected males was ~100% efficient. Vertical transmission of a related partitivirus, verdadero virus, that we discovered in a laboratory colony of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes was similarly efficient. This suggests that efficient biparental vertical transmission may be a feature of at least a subset of insect-infecting partitiviruses. To study the impact of galbut virus infection free from the confounding effect of other viruses, we generated an inbred line of flies with galbut virus as the only detectable virus infection. We were able to transmit infection experimentally via microinjection of homogenate from these galbut-only flies. This sets the stage for experiments to understand the biological impact and possible utility of partitiviruses infecting important model organisms and disease vectors.ImportanceGalbut virus is a recently discovered partitivirus that is extraordinarly common in wild populations of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster. Like most viruses discovered through metagenomics, most of the basic biological questions about this virus remain unanswered. We found that galbut virus, along with a closely related partitivirus found in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, is transmitted from infected females or males to offspring with ~100% efficiency and can be maintained in laboratory colonies over years. This represents one of the most efficient means of virus transmission described, and likely underlies the successful spread of these viruses through insect populations. We created Drosophila lines that contained galbut virus as the only virus infection and showed that these flies can be used as a source for experimental infections. This provides insight into how arthropod-infecting partitiviruses may be maintained in nature and sets the stage for exploration of their biology and potential utility.

From Silent Spring to The Frog of War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David K. Skelly
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
Rachel Carson ◽  
Chemical Agents ◽  
Silent Spring ◽  
The World ◽  
History Information ◽  
Wildlife Populations ◽  
The Impact

This chapter presents two examples to demonstrate that natural history is the necessary basis of any reliable understanding of the world. More than a half century ago, Rachel Carson revolutionized the public’s view of pesticides. The foundation of her success was the careful use of natural history data, collated from across North America. The examples she assembled left little doubt that DDT and other pesticides were causing a widespread decline in birds. More recently, the case for the impact of atrazine on wildlife was based on laboratory experiments, without the advantage of natural history observations. For atrazine, natural history observations now suggest that other chemical agents are more likely to be responsible for feminization of wildlife populations. Developing expectations for scientists to collect natural history information can help to avoid over-extrapolating lab results to wild populations, a tendency often seen when those lab results conform to preconceptions about chemicals in the environment.

scholarly journals Hidden in plain sight: What remains to be discovered in the eukaryotic proteome?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Wood ◽  
Antonia Lock ◽  
Midori A. Harris ◽  
Kim Rutherford ◽  
Jürg Bähler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Ontology ◽  
Fission Yeast ◽  
Genome Sequencing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Biological Process ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
Health And Disease

AbstractThe first decade of genome sequencing stimulated an explosion in the characterization of unknown proteins. More recently, the pace of functional discovery has slowed, leaving around 20% of the proteins even in well-studied model organisms without informative descriptions of their biological roles. Remarkably, many uncharacterized proteins are conserved from yeasts to human, suggesting that they contribute to fundamental biological processes. To fully understand biological systems in health and disease, we need to account for every part of the system. Unstudied proteins thus represent a collective blind spot that limits the progress of both basic and applied biosciences.We use a simple yet powerful metric based on Gene Ontology (GO) biological process terms to define characterized and uncharacterized proteins for human, budding yeast, and fission yeast. We then identify a set of conserved but unstudied proteins in S. pombe, and classify them based on a combination of orthogonal attributes determined by large-scale experimental and comparative methods. Finally, we explore possible reasons why these proteins remain neglected, and propose courses of action to raise their profile and thereby reap the benefits of completing the catalog of proteins’ biological roles.

scholarly journals The Neurotransmitters Involved in Drosophila Alcohol-Induced Behaviors

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggie M. Chvilicek ◽  
Iris Titos ◽  
Adrian Rothenfluh
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Behavioral Response ◽  
Recent Progress ◽  
Mammalian Species ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Behavioral Repertoire ◽  
Significant Research ◽  
Alcohol Response

Alcohol is a widely used and abused substance with numerous negative consequences for human health and safety. Historically, alcohol's widespread, non-specific neurobiological effects have made it a challenge to study in humans. Therefore, model organisms are a critical tool for unraveling the mechanisms of alcohol action and subsequent effects on behavior. Drosophila melanogaster is genetically tractable and displays a vast behavioral repertoire, making it a particularly good candidate for examining the neurobiology of alcohol responses. In addition to being experimentally amenable, Drosophila have high face and mechanistic validity: their alcohol-related behaviors are remarkably consistent with humans and other mammalian species, and they share numerous conserved neurotransmitters and signaling pathways. Flies have a long history in alcohol research, which has been enhanced in recent years by the development of tools that allow for manipulating individual Drosophila neurotransmitters. Through advancements such as the GAL4/UAS system and CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis, investigation of specific neurotransmitters in small subsets of neurons has become ever more achievable. In this review, we describe recent progress in understanding the contribution of seven neurotransmitters to fly behavior, focusing on their roles in alcohol response: dopamine, octopamine, tyramine, serotonin, glutamate, GABA, and acetylcholine. We chose these small-molecule neurotransmitters due to their conservation in mammals and their importance for behavior. While neurotransmitters like dopamine and octopamine have received significant research emphasis regarding their contributions to behavior, others, like glutamate, GABA, and acetylcholine, remain relatively unexplored. Here, we summarize recent genetic and behavioral findings concerning these seven neurotransmitters and their roles in the behavioral response to alcohol, highlighting the fitness of the fly as a model for human alcohol use.

scholarly journals Are model organisms representative for climate change research? Testing thermal tolerance in wild and laboratory zebrafish populations

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Morgan ◽  
Josefin Sundin ◽  
Mette H Finnøen ◽  
Gunnar Dresler ◽  
Marc Martínez Vendrell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Thermal Tolerance ◽  
Thermal Environment ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Acclimation Temperature ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
Climate Change Research ◽  
Genetic Traits ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Laboratory Acclimation

Abstract Model organisms can be useful for studying climate change impacts, but it is unclear whether domestication to laboratory conditions has altered their thermal tolerance and therefore how representative of wild populations they are. Zebrafish in the wild live in fluctuating thermal environments that potentially reach harmful temperatures. In the laboratory, zebrafish have gone through four decades of domestication and adaptation to stable optimal temperatures with few thermal extremes. If maintaining thermal tolerance is costly or if genetic traits promoting laboratory fitness at optimal temperature differ from genetic traits for high thermal tolerance, the thermal tolerance of laboratory zebrafish could be hypothesized to be lower than that of wild zebrafish. Furthermore, very little is known about the thermal environment of wild zebrafish and how close to their thermal limits they live. Here, we compared the acute upper thermal tolerance (critical thermal maxima; CTmax) of wild zebrafish measured on-site in West Bengal, India, to zebrafish at three laboratory acclimation/domestication levels: wild-caught, F1 generation wild-caught and domesticated laboratory AB-WT line. We found that in the wild, CTmax increased with increasing site temperature. Yet at the warmest site, zebrafish lived very close to their thermal limit, suggesting that they may currently encounter lethal temperatures. In the laboratory, acclimation temperature appeared to have a stronger effect on CTmax than it did in the wild. The fish in the wild also had a 0.85–1.01°C lower CTmax compared to all laboratory populations. This difference between laboratory-held and wild populations shows that environmental conditions can affect zebrafish’s thermal tolerance. However, there was no difference in CTmax between the laboratory-held populations regardless of the domestication duration. This suggests that thermal tolerance is maintained during domestication and highlights that experiments using domesticated laboratory-reared model species can be appropriate for addressing certain questions on thermal tolerance and global warming impacts.

scholarly journals Learning on the Fly: The Interplay between Caspases and Cancer

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Cui Xu ◽  
Lewis Arthurton ◽  
Luis Alberto Baena-Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Genetic Manipulation ◽  
Evolutionary Conservation ◽  
Cellular Mechanism ◽  
Model Organisms ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Hallmarks Of Cancer ◽  
The Family ◽  
Cancerous Cells

The ease of genetic manipulation, as well as the evolutionary conservation of gene function, has placedDrosophila melanogasteras one of the leading model organisms used to understand the implication of many proteins with disease development, including caspases and their relation to cancer. The family of proteases referred to as caspases have been studied over the years as the major regulators of apoptosis: the most common cellular mechanism involved in eliminating unwanted or defective cells, such as cancerous cells. Indeed, the evasion of the apoptotic programme resulting from caspase downregulation is considered one of the hallmarks of cancer. Recent investigations have also shown an instrumental role for caspases in non-lethal biological processes, such as cell proliferation, cell differentiation, intercellular communication, and cell migration. Importantly, malfunction of these essential biological tasks can deeply impact the initiation and progression of cancer. Here, we provide an extensive review of the literature surrounding caspase biology and its interplay with many aspects of cancer, emphasising some of the key findings obtained fromDrosophilastudies. We also briefly describe the therapeutic potential of caspase modulation in relation to cancer, highlighting shortcomings and hopeful promises.

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