Drosophila as a model organism

Flymodels A model organism is a species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. This is possible because fundamental biological principles such as metabolic, regulatory, and developmental pathways, and the genes that code for them, are conserved through evolution.
Flies are the best model organisms to study the basic problems of genetics and developmental biology. They are small (ca. 1 mm), have a life cycle of less than 2 weeks and grow on simple cornmeal/ yeast/molasses media. Single male and single can produce more than 100 progeny. Drosophila has also a relatively simple karyotype, with only four pairs of chromosomes. Moreover, the extensive use of Drosophila as a model organism has produced an invaluable knowledge base concerning Drosophila development and anatomy, as well as an extensive set of genetic tools.
The experimental advantages of Drosophila as a model system would have little benefit for drug discovery were it not for the demonstration of conservation between Drosophila and humans. This conservation includes gene sequence conservation and, more importantly functional conservation of regulatory and biochemical pathways, so that knowledge gained using Drosophila can be applied to humans. The conservation of disease genes and disease-related pathways provides a key impetus for adopting Drosophila as a tool for drug discovery.
Since Drosophila is an ideal tool to identify novel drug targets for human diseases we took part in the ChemGen project, which is supported by the Czech Ministry of Education. This project should allow to establish foundation of chemical genetics in the Czech Republic and contribute to the development of system biology and Biomedicine. Chemical genetics is a research method that uses small molecules to change the way proteins work-directly in real time rather than indirectly by manipulating their genes. It is used to identify which proteins regulate different biological processes, to understand in molecular detail how proteins perform their biological functions, and to identify small molecules that may be of medical value.
In our laboratory, we use Drosophila and Drosophila cell cultures for testing functions of adenosine analogs and we are developing tests for assays of insulin and steroid hormone analogs. The tests include luciferase reporter assay, aequorin assays of calcium signaling, direct assays of pKA etc.