Professor David Van Vactor discusses the properties that make the fruit fly (drosophila) a powerful model system.
Transcript:
Drosophila has been a very powerful model system because it combines a very extensive history and a large complement of tools for genetic analysis with a fairly simple and well-characterized body plan. The nervous system consists of thousands of cells as opposed to the billions of cells in the human nervous system.
Doctor Josh Dubnau explains that model systems are particular species of animals that substitute for humans or other animals. For genetic and historic reasons, the fruit fly is a commonly used model.
The fruit fly is easy to maintain, has large numbers of offspring, and grows quickly. The fruit fly shares with humans a number of so-called “master,” or homeotic, genes.
Students work through a series of experiments that investigate the use of model organisms in the search for a better understanding of the genes that influence memory formation.