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A perspective on Drosophila genetics and its insight into human neurodegenerative disease

Drosophila has been long appreciated as a classic genetic system for its ability to define gene function in vivo. Within the last several decades, the fly has also emerged as a premiere system for modeling and defining mechanisms of human disease by expressing dominant human disease genes and analyz...

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Autor principal: Bonini, Nancy M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9743296/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36518845
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2022.1060796
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author Bonini, Nancy M.
author_facet Bonini, Nancy M.
author_sort Bonini, Nancy M.
collection PubMed
description Drosophila has been long appreciated as a classic genetic system for its ability to define gene function in vivo. Within the last several decades, the fly has also emerged as a premiere system for modeling and defining mechanisms of human disease by expressing dominant human disease genes and analyzing the effects. Here I discuss key aspects of this latter approach that first intrigued me to focus my laboratory research on this idea. Differences between the loss-of-function vs. the gain-of-function approach are raised—and the insight of these approaches for appreciating mechanisms that contribute to human neurodegenerative disease. The application of modifier genetics, which is a prominent goal of models of human disease, has implications for how specific genes or pathways intersect with the dominant disease-associated mechanisms. Models of human disease will continue to reveal unanticipated insight into fundamental cellular processes—insight that might be harder to glean from classical genetic methodologies vs modifier genetics of disease.
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spelling pubmed-97432962022-12-13 A perspective on Drosophila genetics and its insight into human neurodegenerative disease Bonini, Nancy M. Front Mol Biosci Molecular Biosciences Drosophila has been long appreciated as a classic genetic system for its ability to define gene function in vivo. Within the last several decades, the fly has also emerged as a premiere system for modeling and defining mechanisms of human disease by expressing dominant human disease genes and analyzing the effects. Here I discuss key aspects of this latter approach that first intrigued me to focus my laboratory research on this idea. Differences between the loss-of-function vs. the gain-of-function approach are raised—and the insight of these approaches for appreciating mechanisms that contribute to human neurodegenerative disease. The application of modifier genetics, which is a prominent goal of models of human disease, has implications for how specific genes or pathways intersect with the dominant disease-associated mechanisms. Models of human disease will continue to reveal unanticipated insight into fundamental cellular processes—insight that might be harder to glean from classical genetic methodologies vs modifier genetics of disease. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-11-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9743296/ /pubmed/36518845 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2022.1060796 Text en Copyright © 2022 Bonini. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Molecular Biosciences
Bonini, Nancy M.
A perspective on Drosophila genetics and its insight into human neurodegenerative disease
title A perspective on Drosophila genetics and its insight into human neurodegenerative disease
title_full A perspective on Drosophila genetics and its insight into human neurodegenerative disease
title_fullStr A perspective on Drosophila genetics and its insight into human neurodegenerative disease
title_full_unstemmed A perspective on Drosophila genetics and its insight into human neurodegenerative disease
title_short A perspective on Drosophila genetics and its insight into human neurodegenerative disease
title_sort perspective on drosophila genetics and its insight into human neurodegenerative disease
topic Molecular Biosciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9743296/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36518845
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2022.1060796
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