Drosophila melanogaster as a Model of Developmental Genetics: Modern Approaches and Prospects
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Drosophila melanogaster as a Model of Developmental Genetics: Modern Approaches and Prospects L. N. Nefedova* Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University, Moscow, 119234 Russia *e-mail: [email protected] Received February 14, 2020; revised February 26, 2020; accepted February 29, 2020
Abstract—For more than a 100 years, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has successfully served as a universal model in various genetic studies, including studies into the genetic control of individual development. To date, a whole arsenal of reverse genetics methods has been developed for Drosophila, making it quite easy to manipulate its genome, which allows Drosophila to be considered one of the most powerful models of developmental genetics. The review considers the main modern methods for studying the expression and function of genes in Drosophila and the prospects for their use. Keywords: Drosophila, developmental genetics, model, gene expression DOI: 10.1134/S1062360420040050
INTRODUCTION For over 100 years, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has successfully served as a universal model in various genetic studies. During this time, a series of significant discoveries were made on Drosophila concerning gene structure, genetic linkage, mechanisms of mutagenesis and recombination, genetic instability, and microevolutionary processes in populations. Drosophila as a model helped to make the most important fundamental discoveries in the field of developmental biology: the basic conservative genetic mechanisms governing the stages of individual development were deciphered. For a long time, the classical approach was used to search for genes that control development: the induction of mutations using chemical or radiation mutagenesis and analysis of the mutant phenotype by hybridological methods followed by thorough genetic mapping of genes (Riggleman et al., 1989). Approximately 20 years ago, the genome of D. melanogaster was completely sequenced and annotated. This made it possible to use the reverse genetics strategy in the genetic analysis of the development of Drosophila. One of the main approaches to the study of gene function by reverse genetics is its directed inactivation with the subsequent study of the mutant phenotype. In the 2000s, a Drosophila-gene inactivation system was proposed based on homologous recombination (Rong et al., 2000). Later, methods for gene inactivation using transposon mutagenesis systems were improved (Nagarkar-Jaiswal et al., 2015), and the CRISPR-Cas technique for inactivation and editing genes (EwenCampen et al., 2017) was introduced. The complete
knockout of genes that control ontogenesis is often accompanied by a lethal phenotype, which complicates the study of the functions of such genes. The problem can be overcome by systems for gene inactivation, which can be carried out in specific tissues or even in specific individual cells (Theodosiou et al., 1998; Lee and Luo, 2001; Ryder and Russell, 2003). Systems have also been developed to study tissue- and age-specific expression of in
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