Bosch et. al. 2019 report in biorxiv a homology-independent genomic site-specific gene knock-in method that can be applied both in vitro and in vivo. Traditional methods of site-specific knock-in use homologous repair, which requires cloning of long homology arms that […]
melanogaster
Engineered Translocation-based Underdominance Gene Drive
A recent paper by Buchman et al. in ACS Synthetic Biology details the development of an underdominance effect through engineered chromosomal translocations in Drosophila melanogaster. The principle of using underdominance as a mechanism for driving desirable genes into populations has […]
Advances in CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing in Drosophila Lead the Way for Applications in Other Insects.
In the January edition of FlyBook (Genetics) Bier et al. review the recent advances in CRISPR/Cas technologies applied to the fruit fly, delving into the details of established and cutting-edge methods and their potential applications to future studies in this […]
Cas9 Expression Patterns Impact on Resistance Evolution in Different Genetic Backgrounds
Gene drive systems are sensitive to the evolution of resistance in the form of polymorphisms in the guide RNA’s target DNA sequence. Champer et al. (2017) have recently reported on their exploration of how Cas9 expression patterns as well as […]
Finding Transcriptional Enhancers
In a recent issue of BioTechniques, Voutev et al. (2016) describe a fast, efficient, and effective method for the in vivo identification of transcriptional enhancers using transgenic reporter genes. Enhancer discovery is a critical aspect of functional genomics studies that […]
An In Vivo Chitin Visualization Tool
Sobala et al (2015) published the results of their efforts to develop a system that enables them to visualize the location of chitin in living insects. While they developed and tested their tool in Drosophila melanogaster it is designed in […]
Gene Editing in an Invasive Species
Li and Scott report their successful use of Cas9 to knockout two genes in Drosophila suzukii in a recent issue of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. Drosophila suzukii or the spotted wing Drosophila although a native of Asia has recently […]
Genetic Manipulation of Insect Cell Lines
Two papers in the December issue of Genetics, Cherbas et al. 2015 and Manivannan et al. 2015, describe an improved method for making Drosophila cell lines with single, targeted mutations. Both works build upon existing recombination-mediated cassette exchange (RMCE) technology […]
Cas9-Mediated Gene-Drive In Mosquitoes
Gantz and Bier who demonstrated the fundamental principles of a Cas9-based gene drive system using Drosophila melanogaster in a publication earlier this year have recreated that system in the mosquito Anopheles stephensi with the help of collaborators. Gantz et al. […]
Mis-Expressing Insect Genes Using Cas9
Lin et al. have now published a paper that demonstrates overexpression of endogenous genes in Drosophila melanogaster using the CRISPR/Cas system. Over- and miss-expression of genes can be a powerful tool to elucidate gene function and is commonly achieved through […]
Knocking Down All Beetle Genes – iBeetle
Dönitz, et al. (2015) recently published a paper describing iBeetle-Base, a repository for the results of the iBeetle screen, an effort to target each gene of Tribolium castaneum using RNAi. Advances in sequencing technology have made more genome data available […]
Conditional Lethal Mutations for Insect Control
In a recently published paper in Science Bulletin, Lin and Wang (2015) created RIDL (release of insects carrying a dominant lethal) strains of D. melanogaster using RNAi against the Pygopus (Pygo) gene – a PHD-finger protein playing an essential role […]
Pulling Recent CRISPR/Cas9 Work in Drosophila Together
Xu et al. review the recent history of using CRISPR/Cas9-based technologies in Drosophila melanogaster. Within the last two years there have been numerous publications describing the use of CRISPR/Cas9-based technologies in Drosophila melanogaster. These last two years have been a time […]
Fly Facility, University of Cambridge, UK
Insect Genetic Technologies Service Provider – Drosophila – Non-commercial Fly Facility, University of Cambridge, UK – http://www.flyfacility.gen.cam.ac.uk Our Drosophila microinjection service is available to fly researchers throughout the European Union. We can inject flies (including non-melanogaster Drosophila species) for P-element/piggyback […]
Towards a Medea Drive System in Anopheles Mosquitoes
Germ-line specific promoters are useful to insect biologists and Biedler and colleagues (2015) in a just-published paper in G3-Genes|Genomes|Genetics report their efforts to identify, isolate and test maternal germline-specific genes and promoters in the Asian malaria vector, Anopheles stephensi. “We […]
Step-By-Step CRISPR-Cas9 for Flies
These days it seems like new papers and reviews relevant to CRISPR-Cas9 modification pop up weekly, if not daily, making it hard to keep up. I am admittedly biased—the authors are close colleagues—but that said, a recent chapter in Methods […]