The Drosophila Ovary as a Laboratory Model for Introducing the Genetic and Cellular Basis of Cell Migration.

Drosophila has been widely used in many teaching laboratories to introduce students to the practical uses of a model organism in scientific research, in particular to present and observe the outcomes of simple Mendelian inheritance. Here we present the details of a laboratory module that uses Drosophila to demonstrate the importance of gene expression in the process of cell migration. Cell migration in the Drosophila ovary is critically important for the proper morphological development of the egg chamber during oogenesis, a process that interestingly shares many of the signaling components required for cell migration observed throughout normal animal development and during tumor invasion in human cancers. This laboratory provides an opportunity to discuss the genetic and cellular basis of cell migration and to demonstrate techniques used in a modern Drosophila research laboratory including the basics of sorting males from females and identification of cuticle markers , but also the development and use of enhancer traps, balancer chromosomes, microdissection, histochemistry and microscopic analysis. Components of this laboratory module have been found to be appropriate for presentation and completion by students ranging from advanced high school laboratories through graduate level cell and developmental biology laboratory courses.