Duncan NRI Faculty and Staff Publications
Publication Date
4-11-2022
Journal
International Journal of Molecular Sciences
DOI
10.3390/ijms23084203
PMID
35457020
PMCID
PMC9027098
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
4-11-2022
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Published Open-Access
yes
Keywords
Animals, Disease Models, Animal, Drosophila, Drosophila melanogaster, Humans
Abstract
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a highly tractable animal model to study various human diseases [1]. Many biological pathways are highly conserved between humans and flies, and nearly 85% of human disease-causing genes have homologs in Drosophila. Drosophila has a relatively short life span and produces a large number of progenies, allowing researchers to perform rapid experiments that can easily be reproduced, allowing reliable statistical analyses of biological data. In addition, there are fewer ethical concerns when using Drosophila for biomedical research compared to mammalian models. Importantly, sophisticated genetic experiments can be designed to answer complicated biological questions, and many mutants and transgenic lines are readily available from the public stock centers. As a result, this model system is now being actively used not only to studying in vivo functions of human disease-related genes, but also to screen and evaluate candidate substances for therapeutic research.