‘Drosophila,’ ‘C. Elegans’

If it’s all Latin to you, here’s the scoop. Fruit flies, round worms, mosquitos, even sunflowers, are employed as model organisms by IU scientists doing genomics research. What they discover impacts quality of life on many levels.

By Susan Williams

But within the scientific community and beyond, the school is a perennial and unanimous No. 1 for its famous fruit fly (Drosophila) research and database. As a sports mascot, the “Fighting Hoosier Fruit Flies” probably wouldn’t cut it with a focus group, but to scientists who work with the pesky and persistent creature that buzzes your bananas, Drosophila is a champion among model organism champions.

While most people could find little similarity between humans and fruit flies, researchers know the biological facts—that nearly half of the 13,600 genes in the fruit fly have human equivalents, which makes the insect tremendously important not only to Bloomington scientists, but to medical researchers at the IU School of Medicine and to scientists at the Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN). Many aspects of biology are similar in most or all organisms, but there are distinct ethical and practical advantages to doing research on flies rather than on humans, or even mice.

“There are a number of genes in the fruit fly that seem to play the same roles as in humans and show relationships to alcoholism and Alzheimer disease, for example,” explained Jeff Palmer, Distinguished Professor of biology at IU Bloomington and a molecular evolutionist. “Ideal model organisms such as Drosophila or C. elegans (a tiny round worm) are relatively simple and easy to manipulate. They develop quickly, have short life spans, are readily available, inexpensive to maintain and there are few ethical concerns. The information we learn through research on model organisms can be taken back and used in the design of better pharmaceuticals or to better understand disease. Or it can be taken to the next level for replication in the mouse.”

A number of projects involving model organisms are in progress on the Bloomington campus or soon will be. For example, IU will be one of two sites for researching the malaria mosquito (Anopheles). And, in addition to several individual fruit fly labs in Bloom-ington, each supporting different research projects, funding from INGEN has provided a new Drosophila facility, which is managed by Thomas C. Kaufman, Distinguished Professor of biology and director of INGEN projects in Bloomington. He has long been involved in fruit fly research and was one of the developers, along with researchers from the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard and Cambridge, of FlyBase, the most respected Drosophila database in existence.

“The new Drosophila lab is a relatively small service facility that is being created to meet two needs,” explained Peter Cherbas, professor of biology and director of IU’s new Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics (CGB). “First, it will make it possible for School of Medicine researchers in Indianapolis to do occasional experiments on flies without having to set up all the infrastructure on their own, and second, it will make it possible for them and for the group of fly labs in Bloomington to do some experiments we couldn’t do before because we haven’t had the equipment.

“To be more specific, the facility will make it possible for researchers to ‘transform’ flies, or to insert DNA into their genomes, without setting up that technical operation in their own labs, and it will provide some new equipment for sorting large numbers of flies—thousands of samples rather than dozens—for genomics experiments.”

The very existence of CGB is another factor in increasing model organism research in Bloomington. According to Cherbas, none of the existing laboratories are directly affiliated with the center, but many of the IU scientists doing research are part of CGB. And with one of the center’s missions being to provide the new, technology-driven, next-generation research instruments necessary for doing genomic research, Cherbas expects many additional collaborations in the future. And the center itself is involved in research projects of its own.

For example, CGB is playing a major role in the development of the Drosophila Genomics Resources Center (DGRC), a CGB creation that will seek National Institutes of Health funding to create critical research materials.

“This is cutting edge technology called ‘functional genomics’ or simply ‘microarrays,’ said Cherbas. “Microarray experiments require that the entire gene set of an organism be ‘printed’ on glass microscope slides as microdots of DNA. Then a researcher can use the slides to ask for a given cell or tissue. The DGRC would oversee production of these materials for the North American fly communities.”

In addition to Drosophila, other model organism projects on the Bloomington campus include a line-up of amphibians, worms, crustaceans, fish and sunflowers.