Combining high-throughput RNAi with RNA expression proves powerful

Zanotto-Filho A, Dashnamoorthy R, Loranc E, de Souza LH, Moreira JC, Suresh U, Chen Y, Bishop AJ. Combined Gene Expression and RNAi Screening to Identify Alkylation Damage Survival Pathways from Fly to Human. PLoS One. 2016 Apr 21;11(4):e0153970. PMID: 27100653.

From the abstract: "... We therefore set out to reevaluate our prior Drosophila RNAi screening data by comparison to gene expression arrays in order to determine if we could identify any novel processes in alkylation damage survival. We noted a consistent conservation of alkylation survival pathways across platforms and species when the analysis was conducted on a pathway/process level rather than at an individual gene level. Better results were obtained when combining gene lists from two datasets (RNAi screen plus microarray) prior to analysis... From this we conclude that RNAi/gene expression fusion is a valid strategy to rapidly identify key processes that may be extendable to other contexts beyond damage survival."

VDRC announces additional 500 RNAi fly stocks available

The VDRSC has announced that additional new RNAi fly stocks using shRNA technology like that used by the Trangenic RNAi Project (TRiP) are now available. In their news item of April 18, 2016, they state that 200 new lines are available and 300 more will be added.

For details see VDRC's news announcement on their website.

High-throughput assay for individual fly egg laying counts reported

Gou B, Zhu E, He R, Stern U, Yang CH. High Throughput Assay to Examine Egg-Laying Preferences of Individual Drosophila melanogaster. J Vis Exp. 2016 Mar 24;(109). PMID: 27077482.

From the abstract: "Recently, egg-laying preference of Drosophila has emerged as a genetically tractable model to study the neural basis of simple decision-making processes. ... To increase the throughput of studying of egg-laying preferences of single females, we developed custom chambers that each can simultaneously assay egg-laying preferences of up to thirty individual flies as well as a protocol that ensures each female has a high egg-laying rate ... This article provides the blueprints for fabricating these chambers and the procedure for preparing the flies to be assayed in these chambers."