Abstract
Flies of the genus Drosophila, and particularly those of the species Drosophila melanogaster, are best known as laboratory organisms. As with all model organisms, they were domesticated for empirical studies, but they also continue to exist as wild populations.Decades of research on these flies in the laboratory have produced astounding and important insights into basic biological processes, but we have only scratched the surface of what they have to offer as research organisms. An outstanding challenge now is to build on this knowledge and explore how natural history has shaped D. melanogaster in order to advance our understanding of biology more generally.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06793.001
Highlights
From its first use in the laboratory in the early 1900s until the present day, Drosophila melanogaster has been central to major breakthroughs in genetics
The use of this fruit fly as a model organism began with the pioneering work of Thomas Hunt Morgan, who was awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for ‘his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in hereditary’
Morgan’s discoveries and the fact that he attracted a highly talented group of graduate students no doubt fuelled the use of D. melanogaster as a model system
Summary
From its first use in the laboratory in the early 1900s until the present day, Drosophila melanogaster has been central to major breakthroughs in genetics. Of considerable interest is that the microbiome of wild D. melanogaster is much more complex (Cox and Gilmore, 2007) than that found in laboratory reared flies, comparable to the differences observed between non-westernized human populations and urban populations that consume highly processed diets (De Filippo et al, 2010) (see Box 1). This similarity between flies and humans reveals the importance of hostmicrobiota homeostasis for human health (David et al, 2014; Kostic et al, 2013). Their microbiomes differ (Chandler et al, 2011) as does their genomic machinery for dealing with various environmental challenges (Low et al, 2007; McDonnell et al, 2012)
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