Evolution is not always about inventing new proteins but using the same old proteins in different ways to attain a new function and thereby modifying the body plan, leading to the development of new species. Drosophila fushi tarazu serves as a great example for evolution in action and this was demonstrated by Ulrike Lohr lab… Read More »
Two developmental biologists Nicholas Gompel and Benjamin Prudhomme, when they were together at the Institute of Developmental Biology of Marseilles-Luminy in France, have unraveled the origin and evolution of helmets in treehoppers. This means these hemipterans have achieved what no other insect was able to in more than 300 million years of evolution : a third… Read More »
The most common reason for generating antibodies against a particular protein in Drosophila is to examine its pattern of endogenous expression during development. There are many methods that use the exquisite sensitivity of antibodies to locate a cellular component or a specific molecule (a tissue antigen). This process of localizing proteins in cells of a… Read More »
Drosophila happens to be a favorite model organism for many ever since Morgan started using it for genetic studies 100 years ago. This tiny arthropod has solved many biological puzzles ,thanks to various researchers working on fruit fly all over the world.Initially the word genetics might be scary for beginners as it involves complicated crosses… Read More »
Introduction:Looks might be really deceiving and this statement holds true in case of heart formation in organisms. Even though Drosophila heart which looks very different from its vertebrates counter parts, but The molecular pathways controlling heart formation and differentiation are evolutionarily conserved. The similar rules in forming heart in flies and higher vertebrates and availability… Read More »
The enormous diversity in body plan among the various organisms in animal kingdom is partly contributed by the Hox genes.Hox proteins regulate gene expression in different ways and thereby generating different body plans.Most of the organisms on earth have one or more clusters of Hox genes.These Hox genes pattern different segment and thus gives a… Read More »
Chromosomes in Drosophila : The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has 3 pairs of autosomal chromosomes and an X and Y chromosome. Each autosome has two arms that are simply referred to as left (L) and right (R). Each chromosome arm is numbered as follows:X (1-20), 2L (21-40), 2R (41-60), 3L (61-80), 3R (81-100), and chromosome… Read More »
Even in the organisms of most basal group in evolution, genes don’t churn out proteins at random. Everything should be controlled in a manner which is tightly regulated. Gene expression must occur only at right time during development, in defined cells and for specific amount of time only, anything more or less or in wrong… Read More »
Humans have long been fascinated by aspects of human sex differences and theories put forward towards understanding this difference can be traced back to era of Aristotle (335BCE). Aristotle proposed that the heat of the male partner during intercourse determined sex of the organism. It took many years and study involving diverse model organisms to understand… Read More »
The research in the field of Drosophila melanogaster in the last century has led to many landmark discoveries including accounting for six Nobel prizes. Drosophila, being one of the topmost studied genetic model organism, has many genetic tools to address and solve biological puzzles. This requires different mutations in genes of interest and many other… Read More »