New fly CRISPR report

Fillip Port (a past DRSC screener) and colleagues have published a new report on CRISPRs in flies. Additional data included as compared with their online preprint.

Port F, Chen HM, Lee T, Bullock SL. Optimized CRISPR/Cas tools for efficient germline and somatic genome engineering in Drosophila. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Jul 7. pii: 201405500. PMID: 25002478.

GenomeRNAi at DKFZ announces version 13

Our colleagues at the DKFZ recently announced that they have launched version 13 of GenomeRNAi. Their news item on the release indicates that the database "now contains phenotype data from 194 human RNAi screens and 183 screens in D. melanogaster" and that the "number of gene-phenotype associations has increased to over 950,000." Check it out!

Protocol report on transgenic ORF strains

Bischof J, Sheils EM, Björklund M, Basler K. Generation of a transgenic ORFeome library in Drosophila. Nat Protoc. 2014 Jul;9(7):1607-20. PMID: 24922270.

From the abstract: "Here we provide a protocol for high-throughput cloning of Drosophila open-reading frames (ORFs) that are regulated by upstream activation sequences (UAS sites) ... We also provide details for FLP/FRT-mediated in vivo exchange of epitope tags (or regulatory regions) in the ORF library strains, which further extends the potential applications of the library. These transgenic UAS-ORF strains are a useful resource to complement and validate genetic experiments performed with loss-of-function mutants and RNA interference (RNAi) lines."

Large-scale in vivo Drososophila RNAi used in study of germ cells

Jankovics F, Henn L, Bujna A, Vilmos P, Spirohn K, Boutros M, Erdélyi M. Functional analysis of the Drosophila embryonic germ cell transcriptome by RNA interference. PLoS One. 2014 Jun 4;9(6):e98579. PMID: 24896584.

Large-scale in vivo RNAi screen in glia

Meyer S, Schmidt I, Klämbt C. Glia ECM interactions are required to shape the Drosophila nervous system. Mech Dev. 2014 May 21. pii: S0925-4773(14)00027-6. PMID: 24859129.

Report of using purified Cas9 for CRISPR genome engineering in Drosophila

Lee JS, Kwak SJ, Kim J, Noh HM, Kim JS, Yu K. RNA-Guided Genome Editing in Drosophila with the Purified Cas9 Protein. G3 (Bethesda). 2014 May 28. pii: g3.114.012179. PMID: 24875628.

Abstract: "We report a method for generating Drosophila germline mutants effectively via injection of the complex of the purified Cas9 protein, tracrRNA, and gene-specific crRNAs, which may reduce delayed mutations because of the transient activity of the Cas9 protein, combined with the simple mutation detection in GO founders by the T7E1 assay."

Review--Functional Genomics Resources

My co-authors and I are pleased to present this Genetics journal "toolbox" series review article.

Mohr SE, Hu Y, Kim K, Housden BE, Perrimon N. Resources for Functional Genomics Studies in Drosophila melanogaster. Genetics. PubMed PMID: 24653003.

Please note that the final published version is now available--complete with live links to the many websites and online software tools we refer to.