Category Archives: Fly – Insects

Hox gene Ultrabithorax is required for wing formation in Tribolium (beetles)

By | April 20, 2021

Do you know that Beetles account for around 25% of all known life-forms on this planet. They belong to the order Coleoptera, which happens to be the largest and most diverse order, not only in the insect class, but in the entire animal kingdom. It is believed that there are eight times as many beetle… Read More »

How a single Hox gene (Ultrabithorax) can specify two different morphologies ?

By | April 20, 2021

Bithorax complex in Drosophila consists of three homeodomain encoding proteins : Ultrabithorax (Ubx), abdominal-A (abd-A) and Abdominal-B (Abd-B). The function of these bithorax genes is to pattern entire abdomen ( A1-A9 segments ) and a part of third thoracic segment ,which happens to be their normal expression domain in embryos. These Hox proteins are expressed… Read More »

Advantages of Drosophila as a model for basic and applied research

By | April 19, 2021

Drosophila has always served as a genetic model system, which was used to understand various aspects of life. This is largely due to some key aspects of fruit fly biology like its fast development cycle, ease and cheap to culture in the lab, wide array of genetic tool ( various mutants available, markers, presence of… Read More »

Classification of Insects

By | April 17, 2021

Considering huge diversity in number and form among various living beings (plants and Animals) on our planet , its rather impossible to study them in detail, unless divided into different categories based on the differences and similarities between them. As many of you are aware that classification of plants and animals is not something of… Read More »

Imaginal discs in Insects

By | April 17, 2021

Imaginal discs are very fascinating structures observed in larva of holometabolous insects and can be defined as Clusters of undifferentiated embryonic cells in holometabolous insects that proliferate during larval stages and then differentiate during the pupal stage upon induction by ecdysone but in the absence of juvenile hormone. In one of the recent post dealing… Read More »

Balancer Chromosomes

By | April 17, 2021

The wide array of genetic tools available for genetic dissection of fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster makes its undoubtedly the most preferred model organism when it comes to in vivo experiments. Balancer chromosomes forms a very important part of this repertoire. Balancer chromosome strains provide key advances for mutagenesis screens, for stock maintenance and for tracking… Read More »

Flp Frt system another gift from Yeast to Fly

By | April 17, 2021

“Yeast” Saccharomyces cerevisiae has contributed immensely in making Drosophila melanogaster a successful model system.The over expression system of UAS GAL4, which is borrowed from Yeast turned out to be real boon for fly geneticists.Another significant contribution came in the form of FLP FRT technique. The system uses the 2um plasmid of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.This… Read More »

RNA interference / RNAi : Tool for loss of function in Drosophila

By | April 17, 2021

RNAi was first described and named so by molecular biologists Andrew Fire of the Carnegie Institute of Washington and Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts, along with their colleagues, in a landmark 19 February 1998 Nature paper.In RNAi ,double stranded RNA(ds RNA) is cleaved invivo by Dicer Ribonuclease into 21-23 nucleotide small interfering RNA(si… Read More »

Transgenesis in Drosophila melanogaster

By | April 17, 2021

The wide array of genetic tools available for Drosophila makes it one of popular eukaryotic model system to study numerous biological questions concerning development, genetics,evolution, cell biology, neuroscience and disease. We so far talked about UAS GAL4 system and P element mutagenesis and today we look into another very pivotal genetic tool used to study… Read More »

P-Element mutagenesis in Drosophila

By | April 17, 2021

There has been a long history of innovation and development of tools for gene discovery and genetic analysis in Drosophila melanogaster. This includes methods to induce mutations and to screen for those mutations that disrupt specific processes, methods to map mutations genetically and physically, and methods to clone and characterize genes at the molecular level.Modern… Read More »