Using fruit fly development to study carcinogenesis and evolution
Previous research
Could development bias the presence or absence of certain phenotypes?
Student engagement: Giant Tyrannosaurusrex arms vs. giant D. melanogaster combs. To engage undergraduate students working with me on this project, I used to show a picture of a T. rex¸ and I asked them whether they believe it is possible to generate a T. rex with giant arms or whether T. rex are unable to produce giant arms due a developmental impossibility. This simple exercise allowed me to introduce a longstanding question in biology: Could development bias the presence or absence of certain phenotypes? I used this example to introduce students to the concept of model organism systems as a tool to study otherwise intractable scientific questions. Although we cannot answer the T. rex question directly, we can explore its underlying principles by genetically manipulating D. melanogaster to generate giant sex combs.
Findings: Our work producing D. melanogaster “giant combs” showed fascinating results, demonstrating the importance of development limiting the appearance of phenotypes. We demonstrated that increasing D. melanogaster comb length over a certain threshold produces a dramatically bent shape, rather than the usual relatively straight shape observed among Drosophila species1. Then, by studying the development of D. melanogaster “giant combs”, we deciphered the mechanism underlying this bending. A “giant comb” is too large to rotate normally, as its movement is mechanically blocked by other bristles during development, thus resulting in a bent shape. This work demonstrated that developmental studies can explain why some phenotypes are present in nature, while others are not.
Student engagement: Giant Tyrannosaurus rex arms vs. giant D. melanogaster combs. To engage undergraduate students working with me on this project, I used to show a picture of a T. rex¸ and I asked them whether they believe it is possible to generate a T. rex with giant arms or whether T. rex are unable to produce giant arms due a developmental impossibility. This simple exercise allowed me to introduce a longstanding question in biology: Could development bias the presence or absence of certain phenotypes? I used this example to introduce students to the concept of model organism systems as a tool to study otherwise intractable scientific questions. Although we cannot answer the T. rex question directly, we can explore its underlying principles by genetically manipulating D. melanogaster to generate giant sex combs.