Annual Drosophila Research Conference, 2006

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The Drosophila Research Conference is a yearly meeting organized by the Genetics Society of America (GSA) for the researchers who use the fruit fly model organism to study different facets of biomedical science. This meeting serves as a platform to present the cutting edge research in the fly model and provides an opportunity for interaction and exchange of ideas. The 47th Annual Drosophila Research Conference took place in Houston, Texas, USA, and was organized by Hugo J. Bellen, Ronald L. Davis, Graeme Mardon (Baylor College of Medicine), and Georg Halder (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center). Nearly 1,500Drosophila researchers from different parts of the world attended this meeting and were treated to presentations on a broad spectrum of biomedical problems. The meeting opened with a keynote address by Prof. Thomas Kaufman from Indiana University, Bloomington. Kaufman has a long legacy of excellent research contributions to Drosophila science and community. His talk on “A century of Drosophila: 100 years of counting” presented major milestones of Drosophila research along the time axis in a very exciting and informative fashion. These findings have contributed significantly to our understanding of Drosophila genetics and development. The “lowly” fruit fly, as Kaufman jokingly refers to the insect, has been a favorite of geneticists for nearly 100 years, longer than any other model organism in the history of genetics. He presented hallmarks of his research about the homeotic gene complex, primarily based on his studies on the Antennapedia (Antp) gene complex and their interacting genes in flies. Another interesting aspect was his study on how morphological changes among different arthropods take place during evolution as a result of changes in their Hox genes, in particular the Antennapedia Complex genes. His presentation had clips from one of the famous science fiction TV shows where a fly mutant (Antp) was used as a central plot. It was followed by presentation of the Larry Sandler Memorial Lecture award to Daniel Ortiz-Barrientos (Indiana University, Bloomington) for his PhD dissertation work on the molecular genetics of speciation. The meeting had 18 platform sessions encompassing 136 talks and 13 workshops and around 1,000 posters. The extent of participation of the fly community in the meeting validates the claim that it is one of the biggest annual fly meetings in the world. Since the topics presented in the meeting cover a broad spectrum of fly research, it is impossible to cover all topics in this commentary. Therefore, we will focus on some of the common themes and topics.