Genetic manipulation of genes and cells in the nervous system of the fruit fly

By K. Venken, Julie H. Simpson, Hugo J. Bellen. 2011

422 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Research in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has lead to insights in neural development, axon guidance, ion channel function, synaptic transmission, learning and memory, diurnal rythmicity, and neural disease that have had broad implications for neuroscience. Drosophila is currently the eukaryotic model organism that permits the most sophisticated in vivo manipulations to address the function of neurons and neuronally expressed genes. Here, we summarize many of the techniques that help assess the role of specific neurons by labeling, removing, or altering their activity. We also survey genetic manipulations to identify and characterize neural genes by mutation, over-expression, and protein labeling. Here, we attempt to acquaint the reader with available options and contexts to apply these methods.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Genetics, Insect Science

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Citations in the corpus

Mushroom body output neurons encode valence and guide memory-based action selection in Drosophila (2014, methodology): “This approach has been widely used in Drosophila (Reviewed in Venken et al., 2011; Griffith, 2012).”
A Framework for Studying Emotions Across Phylogeny (2014, positive): “This would allow rapid progress, because of the new methods available for imaging and manipulating neural circuit analysis in such systems (e.g., Venken and Simpson, 2011), as well as quantitative and objective, machine vision-based methods for measuring the behavior of such model organisms…”
Analysis of functional neuronal connectivity in the Drosophila brain. (2012, methodology): “In Drosophila the Gal4/UAS system is a powerful and versatile method of transgene expression that has been the tool of choice for directing sensor expression in specific neuronal classes within the fly brain (Brand and Perrimon 1993; Venken et al. 2011).”
A GAL4-driver line resource for Drosophila neurobiology. (2012, positive): “This is especially true for the nervous system, where experiments often call for manipulating the activity of small, reproducible sets of neurons (for review, see Venken et al., 2011; Grifﬁth, 2012).”