Home
General
The DSU provides food and services for those in the Department of Biological Sciences using Drosophila in research and teaching.
The Fly Kitchen
The fly food is cooked in a centralized kitchen, room G411, by Jin-xia Qin, the technician. She arranges, cleans, and autoclaves the bottles and vials that are poured with freshly cooked fly food. They are then covered and distributed to the labs and classrooms where the bottles and vials are used for growing Drosophila in genetic experiments and teaching demonstrations. After the bottles and vials are used they are collected and washed before being used again. Approximately 30-50 trays of bottles and vials are used each week by millions of flies.
Drosophila Services
The DSU, primarily through technician Scott Hanna, provides the following services for teaching and research:
- Drosophila transformation - Gene constructs in P element vectors are injected into Drosophila eggs and the resulting progeny with the construct incorporated into the germline are recovered.
- Mutagenesis - The DSU can use EMS, X-ray, and P element mutagens to create and recover new alleles of genes of interest. The only limit is a selection scheme used to recover new alleles.
- Stock maintenance and construction - The unit keeps a variety of often-used stocks for the general convenience of department members. Additional stock keeping duties are also part of the services offered. Stocks are also kept for use in teaching. Stocks can be constructed to contain specific markers and mutations.
- Order stocks - New stocks can be ordered from the major stock centers (Bloomington, Umea) or from other researchers around the world.
- Information and advice - Scott provides information and advice to undergrads, grad student, technicians, and faculty on cross-schemes, phenotypes, and all other aspects of Drosophila breeding and genetics
Drosophila Service Unit Committee
John Locke (Chair)
John Bell
Ross Hodgetts
Shelagh Campbell
Scott Hanna
Jin-Xia Qin
Facilities
The Fly Kitchen is in room G411, while Scott Hanna can be found in room G319 (492-3606).