[ExpertScie]

Drosophila is one of the widely used experimental model due to its similarities with humans. There is a significant similarity in the genome of fruit fly Drosophila with respect to various diseases in human. This makes it ideal for use as model for study of various diseases and in other research. Almost 52% of sequence of protein of fly has mammalian homologs. The well known diseases in which Drosophila is used as genetic model are neurodegenerative disorders like Huntington’s, Parkinson’s, Spinocerebellar ataxia and even Alzheimer’s disease. The effect of many antioxidants with respect to aging and oxidative stress is also studied in this fruit fly. Other diseases in which it is used as genetic model are diabetes, cancer and other immunological diseases.
The scientific reasons for which it is selected as genetic model are:-
1) It has a short reproductive cycle that is generation time. It is only 10 days so result of experiments are concluded soon in research work.
2) It requires little equipments and space thus save cost.
3) It has high Fecundity. Fecundity means females lay up to 100 eggs in one day and almost 2000 in her lifetime. This increase scope in understanding wide range of controls at a given time.
4) The facilitation of genetic studies in this fruit fly is due to absence of meiotic recombination in males.
These are the unique characteristics of drosophila which make it genetic model!