News

Shut-down in response to COVID-19

March 15, 2020

In adherance with Harvard Medical School's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the DRSC/TRiP-FGR and DRSC-BTRR will be closing our doors by 5 pm on Wed. March 16.

Services will be unavailable for at least 6-8 weeks but leaders and staff will be reachable by email, and related resources are available at the BDSC and DGRC in Indiana, and at Addgene, and information remains available at this site.

We are focused right now on minimizing the impact of the shut-down on our activities. In the future, we expect to be able to make use of the time to help our research...

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Screenshot of the FlyScape tool

Wilinski and colleagues release "FlyScape" for metabolic network visualization

November 7, 2019

The DRSC congratulates Wilinski et al. at the University of Michigan for their release and publication of FlyScape, a tool for metabolic network visualization.

Rapid metabolic shifts occur during the transition between hunger and satiety in Drosophila melanogaster

Daniel Wilinski, Jasmine Winzeler, William Duren, Jenna L. Persons, Kristina J. Holme, Johan Mosquera, Morteza Khabiri, Jason M. Kinchen, Peter L. Freddolino, Alla Karnovsky & Monica Dus 

...

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Graphical image of tissue culture, fly pushing, and computer, and the team of people who work with them

DRSC-Biomedical Technology Research Resource

October 21, 2019

We are pleased to announce that we have been funded by NIH NIGMS to form the Drosophila Research & Screening Center-Biomedical Technology Research Resource (DRSC-BTRR). The P41-funded DRSC-BTRR (N. Perrimon, PI; S. Mohr, Co-I) builds upon and extends past goals of the Drosophila RNAi Screening Center.

As the DRSC-BTRR, we are working together with collaborators whose 'driving biomedical projects' inform development of new technologies at the DRSC. At the same time, we continue to support Drosophila cell-based RNAi and CRIPSR knockout screens and related...

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Photo of 384-well assay plates

Drosophila cell screen with DRSC reagent library contributes to identification of new therapeutic target for renal cancer

October 7, 2019

We here at the DRSC/TRiP are thrilled to see this study from Hilary Nicholson et al. published in Science Signaling.

The study provides a great example of how screens in Drosophila cultured cells can be used as part of a cross-species platform aimed at discovery of new targets for disease treatment. The work represents a collaboration between the laboratory of 2019 Nobel Prize winner W. Kaelin and DRSC PI N. Perrimon.

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Figure 1 from the Escobedo et al. micropublication

Micropublication relevant to TRiP fly stocks

April 9, 2019

Users of TRiP RNAi and sgRNA fly stocks take note: the Weake lab at Purdue University brought to our attention that some TRiP fly stocks carry a mutant allele of seveneless. Jonathan Zirin worked with Spencer Escobedo and Vikki Weake, as well as with folks at the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center, to quickly identify the source, sequence the mutant allele, and pubilsh a micropublication so we can get the details to the community. Bottom line, as stated in the micropublication, "The presence of the sev[21]  mutation will not generally affect the use of these stocks, as the X...

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Screenshot of online tools

Navigating our online tools -- orthologs, literature mining, qPCR primers, and so much more!

February 14, 2019

We have been taking a critical look at how we organize our online tools on the Online Tools Overview page. And more generally, we have been thinking about new ways to spread the word about the many resources in our suite of online tools. One way that we at the DRSC like to think about these tools is how they fit into the start-to-finish order of events in a screen or other experimental project. Various tools help define lists of genes to be studied, help identify reagents for the study,...

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Cartoon of fly host cells with virus or endosymbiotic bacteria

Cell-based RNAi screening helps reveal host-microbe interactions--two new screen reports

November 19, 2018

Laboratories at the Skirball Institute at New York University and the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University reported results of two different cell-based Drosophila RNAi screens in papers published this week. The screens have in common that they looked at interactions between the host insect cells and a microbe -- the endosymbiont Wolbachia in one study and baculovirus in the other. For more, check out the newly published studies. For both these screens, the DRSC provided libraries for screens that were then performed at the host institution.

 

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screenshot of the drosophilaresearch.org news page

Community Building and Online Resources at the DRSC/TRiP

August 14, 2018

At the DRSC/TRiP-Functional Genomics Resources, we are interested to let the community know about new resources we have built. We are also interested more broadly to help connect community members to additional resources that could help their research studies, foster collaborations, and build community.

One way in which we reach out to the community is by attending national and local fly group meetings. In 2018, this included or will include attendance at the ADRC fly meeting in Philly (spring 2018), and past or upcoming presentations at Flies on the Beach (FL),...

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