Oct 17, 2016
The second edition of the book "Drosophila: Methods and Protocols" has been released.
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is one of the most powerful genetically tractable model organisms. Work using Drosophila has made many valuable contributions to our understanding of animal development, behavior, and physiology and of human disease. Inspiring work and new research avenues often depend on the development of novel techniques. The use of transposons to generate transgenic flies or the adaptation of yeast systems to express genes or make mosaic animals are to name but a few of the techniques that led to breakthroughs in Drosophila research. Descriptions of these and other important methods were included in the first edition of ‘Drosophila: Methods and Protocols’ published in 2008. Since then, the thriving fly researcher community continued to refine and invent techniques. The current second edition of this book in part tries to reflect this effort and covers some of these more recent methods. The book starts with a description of FlyBase, a database of genes and genomes, followed by the presentation of systems for versatile gene expression in the fly. Chapters detailing methods of gene knockdown and editing, including CRISPR-Cas9, and protein knockdown then follow. Live imaging has become an important aspect of studying Drosophila and so the next chapters are devoted to methods detailing live imaging of different tissues and organs followed by chapters describing how to quantify image data and how to probe tissue mechanics by laser ablation. The next two chapters provide methods for analyzing transcription followed by protocols to study growth, metabolism, ageing, and behavior in Drosophila. The book closes with chapters on electrophysiological recordings and methods to establish cell lines.
This book provides a valuable source of hands on protocols and reviews for molecular, cell and developmental biologist using Drosophila as model system in their work.