X-Nico

14 unusual facts about Drosophila melanogaster


2008 German Beekill Incident

Though the normal corn seed treatment formulation of clothianidin was authorized for use against fruit flies and wireworms at 25 grams of the chemical per 50,000 seeds, the seed batches associated with this incident received a special authorization at a much higher concentration, 62 grams per 50,000 seeds, to protect against an infestation of western corn rootworm.

Achaete-scute complex

The achaete-scute complex (AS-C) is a group of four genes (achaete, scute, lethal of scute, and asense) in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

Dyskerin

The protein encoded by this gene is related to the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Cbf5p and Drosophila melanogaster Nop60B proteins.

Fringe gene

In Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly) the fringe gene (fng) was identified as part of the notch mechanism by Dr. Kenneth Irvine at the Waksman Institute at Rutgers.

Insect cell culture

There are currently more than 100 insect cell lines available for recombinant protein production with lines derived from Bombyx mori, Mamestra brassicae, Spodoptera frugiperda, Trichoplusia ni, and Drosophila melanogaster being of particular interest.

Maelstrom gene

The gene Maelstrom, Mael, creates a protein, which was first located in Drosophila melanogaster in the nuage perinuclear structure and has functionality analogous to the spindle, spn, gene class.

Metaviridae

An example of this is the gypsy, a retroelement found in the Drosophila melanogaster genome.

Phenotypic screening

Example organisms used for high-content screening include the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), zebrafish (Danio rerio) and mice (Mus musculus).

Pouteria caimito

In Brazil, the main pest that destroys the fruit is thought to be the fruit fly.

Pseudoviridae

The type species Saccharomyces cerevisiae Ty1 virus, from the genus pseudovirus and the type species Drosophila melanogaster copia virus from the genus Hemivirus, both belong to the Pseudoviridae family.

Redoxon

In this method, fruit flies were attracted to a mixture of wine, vinegar, yeast bouillon, and sorbitol, a substance easily chemically prepared from glucose.

Sevenless

Sevenless (sev) is a gene in Drosophila melanogaster that encodes a receptor tyrosine kinase protein essential to the development of R7 cells in the Drosophila embryonic eye.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana

The wordplay is based on the distinct meanings of the two occurrences of the word flies (the verb "travel through the air" and the noun for certain insects), and of the word like (the preposition "similarly to" and the verb "enjoy").

Tribble

A family of proteins which have a variety of roles, including involvement in the control of the cell cycle in the fruit fly, was named after these fictional animals.


Crustacean cardioactive peptide

Interestingly, under specific conditions, CCAP has also been shown to induce cardiac reversal in M. sexta and D. melanogaster.

DCrk

DCrk (Drosophila ortholog of Crk) is the Drosophila melanogaster ortholog of the mammalian proteins Crk and CrkL.

Dosage compensation

Dosage compensation may occur in other organisms like the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans and the plant White campion (Silene latifolia).

Drosophila melanogaster species subgroup

The Drosophila melanogaster species subgroup contains 9 species, including the best known species Drosophila melanogaster and D. simulans.

ETS transcription factor family

There are 29 genes in humans, 28 in the mouse, 10 in Caenorhabditis elegans and 9 in Drosophila.

Flightless fruit fly

Flightless fruit flies (Order Diptera) encompasses a variety of different species of fly, such as Drosophila melanogaster, Bactrocera cucurbitae, Bactrocera dorsalis, and Drosophila hydei, with genetic mutations that cause them to be flightless.

Gerald M. Rubin

Gerald Mayer Rubin (born 1950) is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the Drosophila melanogaster genome.

Information Hyperlinked over Proteins

The network presented in iHOP currently contains 28.4 million sentences and 110,000 genes from over 2,700 organisms, including Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans, Danio rerio, Arabidopsis thaliana, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli.

Meiosis

In 1911 the American geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan observed crossover in Drosophila melanogaster meiosis and provided the first genetic evidence that genes are transmitted on chromosomes.

Nuclear lamina

Not all organisms have the same number of lamin encoding genes; Drosophila melanogaster for example has only 2 genes, whereas Caenorhabditis elegans has only one.

Patched

The original mutations in the ptc gene were discovered in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster by 1995 Nobel Laureates Eric F. Wieschaus and Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and colleagues, and the gene was independently cloned in 1989 by Joan Hooper in the laboratory of Matthew P. Scott, and by Philip Ingham and colleagues.

Segment polarity gene

In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, segment polarity genes help to define the anterior and posterior polarities within each embryonic parasegment by regulating the transmission of signals via the Wnt signaling pathway and Hedgehog signaling pathway.