For more than a century, Drosophila melanogaster, a species of common fruit fly, has been an indispensable model organism for genetics research. These flies thrive in the laboratory with minimal care and expense, reproduce rapidly, and possess an easily manipulated genome. The entire Drosophila genetic code has been sequenced, and Drosophila and humans share many genes that are known to cause disease.

However, the use of Drosophila in cancer genetics has been fairly limited until recently. “Historically, people thought that Drosophila never grow tumors,” explained Dr. Tian Xu, professor of genetics at Yale University and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, whose laboratory has been testing uses for Drosophila in cancer research since 1993.

Early experiments where germline mutations (mutations in eggs or sperm) in genes suspected of playing a role in cancer development were introduced into fly lines failed: These flies carried the mutations in every cell in their body, and their offspring were not viable—they died in the embryonic stage.

Original article here