After decades of intensive research, D. melanogaster and its relatives could provide important tools for investigating future biological questions about human health and environmental change, but only if we better understand their natural history.
To leverage the tools, resources and knowledge that exist for C. elegans so that we can study ecology, evolution and other aspects of biology, we need to understand the natural history of this important model organism.
A combination of genetic, anatomical and physiological techniques has revealed that the lateral horn, a region of the brain involved in olfaction in flies, has many more types of neurons than expected.
Biochemical and genetic experiments show that Ebf and Lhx2 cooperate to specify olfactory receptor enhancers, which cooperate to drive olfactory receptor expression.
Pathogenic LRRK2kinase requires Rab10 and RILPL1 to block primary cilia formation, shortening cilia on cholinergic neurons needed for a hedgehog driven circuit that supports dopaminergic neurons in mouse brain.
Certain types of 3D chromatin loops are easy to predict from existing or easily obtainable 2D information, which benefits gene expression studies in tissues/cells/organisms without extensive pre-existing 3D information.
