Community Building and Online Resources at the DRSC/TRiP

August 14, 2018
screenshot of the drosophilaresearch.org news page

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), Brown University Fly Club (RI), Boston Area Fly Meeting (MA), U Mass Worcester fly group meeting (MA), and Seattle area fly group meeting (WA). Feel free to contact the Director if you are interested to have us discuss our resources and how to use them at a meeting near you.

Another way that we reach out to the fly community is through curation of online resources at blogs and websites that we developed and maintain. Here is a list of online outreach and community-building resources we developed and maintain, and a few notes on why to visit:

Drosophila Research Portal (drosophilaresearch.org). This website, built using the OpenScholar content mangement system offered to us through Harvard University, provides an easily updatable platform for sharing news and events within and beyond the Drosophila research community. We post events such as fly-related conferences and workshops happening around the world, whenever possible providing a link to the conference or workshop's own webpage. We also curate pages on books and online resources. The latter includes links to fly research-related online teaching resources, videos, image downloads, etc. At the site, we tag each online resource by resource type and by audience. Clicking a keyword will bring up all resources of tagged with that keyword. At the top-right of any page on drosophilaresearch.org, you'll find a link to a form that allows you to suggest an event, news item, link, etc. to be added.

Drosophila Models of Human Diseases (flydiseasemodels.blogspot.com). This Blogger site presents a large but not comprehensive set of posts on new fly models of human diseases and use of fly models to study those diseases. Posts are tagged--always and only--by disease. As a result, you can get a quick view of the impressive number and variety of human diseases that have been modeled in the fly, just by taking a look at the tags list on the righ-hand side of the page (below  'recent posts' and 'popular posts'). We find it impossible to keep up with all models (especially in the area of neurodegeneration). However, we do try to add new posts regularly and pay particular attention when the post adds a new disease to the list. 

FlyRNAi Blog (flyrnai.blogspot.com). Yes, we know, Blogger and RNAi are so yesterday. What else do they have in common? They are well-established and robust, and good at what they are aimed to provide. At this blog, we present technical tips, new reports, and other information about RNAi screening in fly cells or flies, as well as information about CRISPR technologies. Check out the "troubleshooting" keyword results to see publications about known issues with RNAi fly stock collections, edge effects in cell-based assays in microwell plates, and more.

What else? We also want to be sure that you are aware of some related resources from others. Below are just a few of the many sites by others that we think you'll find worth taking a look at.

NIH ORIP's Comparative Medicine resources pages. With links to vertebrate and invertebrate research resources, fact sheets, new initiatives, and more.
Insect Genetic Technologies-Research Coordination Network. The site's community blog Technology Tips helps us keep up with new CRISPR technologies and more.
FlyBase. How could we not include FlyBase?! Check out the left-hand side of the home page for links to additional resources and the FlyBase YouTube tutorial series.