Model Organisms in Drug Discovery

4
Drosophila as a Tool for Drug
Discovery
Hao Li and Dan Garza
Comparative genomics of humans and Drosophila demonstrates a high degree
of conservation both at the level of molecular building blocks (genes) and at the
level of disease-relevant pathways (gene networks). This conservation provides
the basis for at least four major areas of Drosophila application in drug
discovery: discovery of drug targets, mechanism-of-action studies, compound
screening and genotoxicity tests. This chapter discusses how fly models of
human diseases can be established and utilized in the four areas of drug
discovery. We also include a brief discussion of the available experimental tools
and high throughput tools that need to be developed further.
4.1 Drosophila as a model organism for biomedical science
Introduction
One of the major paradigms in today’s basic biomedical research is to use
experimentally tractable model organisms to study human gene function. For
nearly a century, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has been utilized as a
genetic system to study a variety of basic biological processes. Several features
make Drosophila attractive as a model organism for genetic and biomedical
research. First, Drosophila is easily cultured in the laboratory. Flies are small
(ca. 1 mm), have a life cycle of less than 2 weeks and grow on simple cornmeal/
Model Organisms in Drug Discovery. Edited by Pamela M. Carroll and Kevin Fitzgerald
Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. ISBN: 0-470-84893-6