This directory points to internet resources for research on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. If you have any comments on the site or wish to add a resource, please send me a note. Questions regarding Drosophila research should be posted to bionet.drosophila. This site is part of the Model Organisms group within the Biosciences area of the World-Wide Web Virtual Library (History).

Gerard Manning

What is Drosophila?

Drosophila neurobiology

• The Flybrain project (USA | Germany | Japan) has information and images of the Drosophila nervous system.
• A Drosophila nervous system atlas (Fishbach lab).
• A clickable hyper-neuroblast map, with information on lineage and gene expression in the early CNS (Doe lab).
• The Motor Axon guidance primer (Zinn lab).
• FlyTrap is an online database of gene expression patterns (of P[Gal4] lines) in the fly brain.
• The Virtual Brain has 3D reconstructions of fly brains.

Fly Stock Centers

Bloomington, Indiana.

The largest of stock centers has a nice website including information on culturing flies and equipment sources.

Szeged, Hungary

Extensive collection of P element lines.

Kyoto, Japan

Ehime, Japan

Drosophila species stock center

In Arizona, USA. Carries stocks of several hundred different Drosophila species.

Other Resources

FlyMove

Excellent learning resource, with extensive pictures and animations of embryonic development.

FlyView

A graphical atlas of expression patterns of genes and enhancer traps at all stages of development.

DRES (Drosophila-related EST sequences)

A catalog of human cDNA clones that show sequence similarity to Drosophila genes.

GIFTS - Gene Interactions in the Fly

Catalogs gene interactions in Drosophila pattern formation, run by Bernard Jacq's group in Marseille.

Tracheal development

A new resource by the Affolter lab.

Immunity

A listing of Drosophila genes involved in the immune response.

Malpighian tubule resource

Information for research on the malpighian tubule (insect kidney).

Fly Spermatogenesis Resource

Maintained by the DiNardo Lab, includes a spermatogenesis overview and molecular marker details

Drosophila Cadherin homepage

Reviews and classification of cadherin genes in Drosophila.

FlyNome

A small but growing reference site on the stories behind the fanciful naming of many fly genes.

JFly - Japanese Drosophila resources

Jfly is a Web site mainly in Japanese, with many resources, including archives of the Japanese Drosophila mailing list, and (in English), some protocols, back issues of the Drosophila Information Newsletter and Drosophila references libraries in EndNote format.

Chromosome squashes

• Original Bridges (1935) pictures (Hawaii).
• EM pictures (Helsinki).

GeNet / SegNet

The Gene Networks Database has extensive information on interaction between segmentation genes, including antibody stains, interaction diagrams and categorised interaction classes, including images of gene expression during segmentation and Java viewers.

The Virtual Flylab

This was a free resource allowing students to model fly crosses online and view the outcome. It's now part of the commercial Biology Labs Online

Sequence and genome resouces

• Drosphila genome site at NCBI
• The TIGR Drosophila gene index is a collection of known and predicted gene sequences from EST, cDNA and genomic data.
• BCM Gene Finder for Drosophila sequences
• Grail Gene Finder, with Drosophila option.
• FastA search against Drosophila-specific databases (Don Gilbert).
• Drosophila microarray project (Stanford).
• Developmental Gene Expression timecourse (Yale).

Commercial Suppliers

• Habitat Design has some very nice Drosophila-themed T-shirts, cards, bags and suchlike.
• Carolina Biological Supply provides wild type and mutant flies, and supplies, for school genetics experiments.
• The Drosophila Company provides fly cultures
• Applied Scientific provide a range of supplies for fly stock maintenance.
• Lab Scientific provide fly culture equipment and supplies.
• United Lab Plastics supply plastic Drosophila culture vials and insect rearing chambers.
• Genesee Scientific (formerly DocFrugal) sells a variety of Drosophila culture supplies.
• FlyInjection does the work of making transgenic flies, for a price.
• Ed's Fly Meat, and flyculture.com provide fly cultures, and culture medium, for those who feed flies to their pets!
• Trikinetics makes a Drosophila activity monitor, for circadian research.
• Tritech Research sell Drosophlia supplies and incubators.
• Other suppliers may be listed in the Sources of Supplies page from the Bloomington Stock Center.
• The Harvard Bioshop makes a variety of fly-handling equipment.
• Power Scientific sell Drosophila incubators and other lab equipment.

Related resouces

• The best source of up-to-date news on Drosophila, and a good place to ask and answer requests is the bionet.drosophila newsgroup on Usenet. An elaborate archive is available on the Web from Bionet.
• The Biosciences area of the Virtual Library has many relevant pages, including ones for developmental biology, genetics, and Model Organisms.
• Drosophila Conferences, from Flybase
• The Company of Biologists, has information on the journals Development, Journal of Cell Science, Bioessays and Journal of Experimental Biology.
• The Genetics Society of America is online, with information on the annual Drosophila meeting, membership and their journal, Genetics.
• Entomology Resources (Colorado State University)
• The Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank curates many antibodies against Drosophila antigens.

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Finally, a plug for a new site on bioinformatics software for Mac OS X and Macintosh.