THE FRUITFLY; Best Known Organism and a Multi-Prize Winner

The motivation for this write-up is the 2017 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for studies on the biological clock. 10 Nobel laureates with 6 Nobel prizes between them have been awarded for studies for which Drosophila melanogaster (also known as fruitfly or DM) has been the animal model.
Image source: Googleimages

"They seem like they were made for the lab"

A brief historical perspective

The first use of DM as a model in biomedical research is accorded to William E Castle in 1901, a professor at Harvard University; he suggested the idea of using DM in research to a network of experimental zoologists. Castle’s work influenced William J Moenkhaus, a professor at Indiana University Medical School, who introduced the fruit fly into his laboratory. Frank E Lutz, at the Carnegie Institute took Moenkhaus’ advice and incorporated DM into his work too. Lutz recommended their use to Thomas Morgan in 1906, whose work with this model organism in what became known as ‘”the fly room” produced great advances in genetic research.

But it was just the beginning.

What is the fascination that scientists hold for DM?

1. Easy, cheap and harmless: Mate a male and female fruitfly and in two weeks you'd have a new generation of flies for your experiments. With only a few bucks you can feed and maintain the flies who live on yeast, corn meal and sugar. What about equipments? DM research, having a long history has well developed methods and infrastructure. The flies are totally harmless to humans so there are no worries.
2. A lot is known about the fly: 75% of human disease causing genes are also found in fruitflies including neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and autoimmune disease. Also, the human genome is 60% similar to that of the DM genome housed in 4 pairs of chromosomes whose sequence was completed in year 2000 and is readily available on the fly database. This makes tweaking and manipulation of their genes relatively easy. Anatomically, the fly and humans share many similarity.
3. Excellent turnover rate: Experiments that take up to a year in rodent model take only days to complete in DM. Different stages of its lifecycle can be studied.
4. Accessible: Aside from the fact that information on DM is exhaustive, getting the strains you need for your experiments is relatively easy. There are many credible stock centers all over the world. In Nigeria, DM can be booked at drosolab University of Ibadan
5. Conforming with ethical standard: According to the he European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM) proposes that 3 Rs are important in animal testing; Reduction (in number of animal use) Replacement (using alternative to animals) and Refinement (reducing pain). DM has been found to conform to these standards and is thus is widely used without overbearing ethical demands.

Source: droso4schools

The Prizes

6 Nobel Prizes for “Physiology or Medicine” to 10 scientists for ground-breaking work in Drosophila:
1933: Thomas Hunt Morgan – The role played by chromosomes in heredity
1946: Hermann Joseph Muller – The production of mutations by means of X-ray irradiation
1995: Edward B. Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Eric F. Wieschaus – The genetic control of early embryonic development
2004: Richard Axel – Odour receptors and the organisation of the olfactory system
2011: Jules A. Hoffmann – The activation of innate immunity
2017: Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, Michael W. Young – molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm
Source: droso4schools

Source: droso4schools
Everything from cancer, genetics, toxicology, ageing, cell death, and developmental research are been done using the fruitfly. A little fly can make a whole world of difference!

Thanks for reading, hope you learnt something, share your thoughts by commenting and resteeming. Follow @tolulope.tolu for more interesting articles.

Information Source: Stephelson and Metcalfe (2013), Nobelprize, droso4schools