title: Drosophila tools and assays for the study of human diseases.
abstract: Many of the internal organ systems of Drosophila melanogaster are functionally analogous to those in vertebrates, including humans. Although humans and flies differ greatly in terms of their gross morphological and cellular features, many of the molecular mechanisms that govern development and drive cellular and physiological processes are conserved between both organisms. The morphological differences are deceiving and have led researchers to undervalue the study of invertebrate organs in unraveling pathogenic mechanisms of diseases. In this review and accompanying poster, we highlight the physiological and molecular parallels between fly and human organs that validate the use of Drosophila to study the molecular pathogenesis underlying human diseases. We discuss assays that have been developed in flies to study the function of specific genes in the central nervous system, heart, liver and kidney, and provide examples of the use of these assays to address questions related to human diseases. These assays provide us with simple yet powerful tools to study the pathogenic mechanisms associated with human disease-causing genes.
authors.affiliation: Program in Developmental Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Berrak
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ugur
authors.affiliation: Program in Developmental Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
authors.forename: Kuchuan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Program in Developmental Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, Texas Children's Hospital, Houston, TX 77030, USA hbellen@bcm.edu.
authors.forename: Hugo J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Bellen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001681:Biological Assay; D004194:Disease; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009928:Organ Specificity
keywords: Drosophila; Fat body; Heart; Human disease models; Kidney; Liver; Malpighian tubules; Nephrocytes; Nervous system; Neurodegeneration; Oenocyte; Regeneration