So much of talk is going around about Hox genes in the field of evolution and some might wonder what makes them so important in this field as well, along with developmental biology.What is that we are going to learn about evolution by studying Hox proteins?or to put it in another way : Why Hox genes are pivotal for evo devo???
Hox genes or Homeotic genes were first discovered in Fruit fly Drosophila and later homologous genes were found in all metazoans except sponges and Ctenophores.This was possible only after the …

According to the theory of Cambrian explosion most of the animal groups found today appeared for the first time some 545 million years ago within a short period of 5 to 10 million years (this is indeed short for evolution).Life existed on Earth 4 billion years ago but the organisms present at that time were mostly bacteria, Planktons and some multicellular algae.About 600 million years ago in precambrian age there was a rapid change as evidenced by fossil record.Then, between about 570 and 530 million years ago, another explosion of …

Transgenesis in Fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has come a long way from the days of landmark discovery of spradling and Rubin in 1982.Drosophila research has been highly dependent on P element-mediated transgenesis,(as all technologies progress depends on ability to transform them,like UAS GAL4 system,UAS RNAi,FRT FLP for somatic and germ line clones to name some) even though it has two major drawbacks: the size of the DNA that can be integrated is limited and the insertion sites cannot be controlled.
P element has a tendency to integrate at the 5′ …

BMC Biology published an article on enigmatic “Y larvae” ,a crustacean larval type first identified more than 100 years ago from ocean samples.Despite several efforts the adult form of this larvae was never identified.
Work from Henrik Glenner et al have successfully and repeatedly induced metamorphosis of y-larvae into a novel, highly reduced juvenile stage by applying the crustacean molting hormone 20-HE.This new stage resembled a slug like organism ,unsegmented,lack limbs and lost all characters of arthropods ,but it is capable of vigorous peristaltic motions.This juvenile which is 300-400µ long is …

RNAi was first described and named so by molecular biologists Andrew Fire of the Carnegie Institute of Washington and Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts, along with their colleagues, in a landmark 19 February 1998 Nature paper.In RNAi ,double stranded RNA(ds RNA) is cleaved invivo by Dicer Ribonuclease into 21-23 nucleotide small interfering RNA(si RNA) which in association with RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) guides sequence specific mRNA degradation.RNAi mechanism is observed in many organisms thought to be derived from ancient mechanism to combat viral infections.

Experimentally introduced dsRNA can trigger …

Development journal publishes a new exciting article pertaining to the fate of Maxillary palps and antennal development in fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.The work is from the lab of David Cribbs (Centre de Biologie du Développement,Toulouse) ,who is interested in understanding role of selector genes and signaling pathways in head development. (102)

The wide array of genetic tools available for Drosophila makes it one of popular eukaryotic model system to study numerous biological questions concerning development, genetics,evolution, cell biology, neuroscience and disease.We so far talked about UAS GAL4 system and P element mutagenesis and today we look into another very pivotal genetic tool used to study gene function.After the genome sequence of Drosophila was released in 2000,it has been realized that only 20% out of total(~13600 genes) could be identified by available techniques.The aim of present era of genomics …