Breaking Report: Cell-basd RNAi protocol

Ravi D, Bishop AJ. Identification of Genes Required for Damage Survival Using a Cell-Based RNAi Screen Against the Drosophila Genome. Methods Mol Biol. 2012;920:9-26. PubMed PMID: 22941593.

Appeal for support letters -- FlyAtlas

The authors of FlyAtlas are appealing for email letters of support as they apply for a new round of funding. If you're a FlyAtlas user, please consider voicing your support. At the DRSC and TRiP, we have seen the resource useful to researchers at both planning and analysis stages. As of this posting, the appeal for email letters of support is on their home page.

Fly App

Not directly RNAi related but I can't resist posting this.

Kumar S, Boccia K, McCutchan M, Ye J. Exploring spatial patterns of gene expression from Fruit Fly embryogenesis on the iPhone. Bioinformatics. 2012 Aug 24. PubMed PMID: 22923306

Novel Assay: Detecting JH

This paper describes an improved approach to detecting farnesoic acid and juvenile hormone. A starting point for a large-scale in vivo RNAi screen perhaps? Open access paper.

Rivera-Perez C, Nouzova M, Noriega FG. A quantitative assay for the juvenile hormones and their precursors using fluorescent tags. PLoS One. 2012;7(8):e43784. PubMed PMID: 22928033

Breaking Report: dsRNA Uptake

Also on my desk to read today?  This paper, which includes a description of what happens following introduction of C. elegans SID-2 into Drosophila S2 cells.

McEwan DL, Weisman AS, Hunter CP. Uptake of Extracellular Double-Stranded RNA by SID-2. Mol Cell. 2012 Aug 14. PMID: 22902558

Breaking Report: F-Box Protein in vivo RNAi Study

On my desk to read today? An in vivo study in which the researchers systematically tested the effects of knockdown of genes encoding F-box-containing proteins.

Dui W, Lu W, Ma J, Jiao R. A Systematic Phenotypic Screen of F-box Genes Through a Tissue-specific RNAi-based Approach in Drosophila. J Genet Genomics. 2012 Aug 20;39(8):397-413. PMID: 22884096.

Breaking Report: Plasmid Toolset for in vivo Expression or RNAi

On my desk to read today? A report of a set of plasmid vectors useful for in vivo expression of various forms of tagged or untagged genes or RNAi constructs.

Wang JW, Beck ES, McCabe BD. A modular toolset for recombination transgenesis and neurogenetic analysis of Drosophila. PLoS One. 2012;7(7):e42102. Epub 2012 Jul 25. PubMed PMID: 22848718

The authors indicate that the plasmids are available at AddGene.

Related resource: pVALIUM and pWALIUM vectors from the Trangenic RNAi Project (TRiP) at Harvard Med School.