Resources

On this page we collate resources helpful for your practical public engagement, including films and literature providing background on Drosophila. Classifying these resources in meaningful ways is not trivial and the best is to brows through them. Please, note that resources for school engagement are collated on our dedicated droso4schools website. Please, help to improve this site! If you have any suggestions, found useful links or want to share your own ideas/activities/resources, please feel free to contact us.

Outreach Resources by the Manchester Fly Facility

  • Animated life cycle for download as PowerPoint file — [LINK]
  • The “Why fly?” page on droso4schools
  • School article in Biological Sciences Review: Fruit flies in biological research
  • Our collection of lay articles about fly research
  • Some reasons for Drosophila outreach and science communication
  • Talk about Drosophila outreach at the 2015 European Drosophila Research Conference — [LINK1] – [LINK2]
  • Patel, S., Prokop, A. (2015). How to develop objective-driven comprehensive science outreach initiatives aiming at multiple audiences. bioRxiv 10.1101/023838 — [LINK]
  • Patel, S., Prokop, A. (2017). The Manchester Fly Facility: Implementing an objective-driven long-term science communication initiative. Semin Cell Dev Biol, available online — [LINK]

  • A Hama bead fly made according to our plan.

    Hama bead patterns of Drosophila and other model organisms — [LINK]

  • Patel, S., DeMaine, S., Heafield, J., Bianchi, L., Prokop, A. (2017). The droso4schools project: long-term scientist-teacher collaborations to promote science communication and education in schools. Sem Cell Dev Biol, in press
  • Article about the Manchester Fly Facility: Promoting Drosophilaas a modern research and teaching tool
  • See our two movies: “Small fly: BIG impact” — [LINK1] – [LINK2]
  • Supply of fly food that can be stored for months at room temperature
  • Instructions how to generate and use a pooter for fly genetics
  • Ways of tipping fruit flies video
  • A fold plan of a fly box with lots of fun info to store your fly lab tools
  • Use the Genotype Builder to quickly generate images of flies with your own choice of marker combinations
  • Download the LifeCycle-complete: “How old is my fly stock?“
  • How to generate an ether bottle to anaesthetise flies

Our online sites and repositories

(we can also upload your resources – of course clearly indicating your authorship and you keeping ownership)

  • Genetics training (publication): Roote, J., Prokop, A. (2013). How to design a genetic mating scheme: a basic training package for Drosophila genetics. G3 (Bethesda) 3, 353-8 — [LINK]
  • Genetics training (accompanying resources, including the ‘genotype builder’): Prokop, A. (2013). A rough guide to Drosophila mating schemes. figshare, 10.6084/m9.figshare.106631 — [LINK]
  • Genetics training (lite manual for short-term student projects or teaching courses plus practical course manual & materials): Prokop, A. (2013). 2nd year Drosophila developmental genetics practical. figshare, m9.figshare.156395 — [LINK]
  • Genetics training (e-assessment): Fostier, M., Patel, S., Clarke, S., Prokop, A. (2015). A novel electronic assessment strategy to support applied Drosophila genetics training on university courses. G3 (Bethesda) 5, 689-98 — [LINK]

  • droso4schools website: collates links to online resources from across the world that can be used for school engagement relating to Drosophila — [LINK]
  • School lessons  (figshare repository): fully developed school lessons including presentation files, teacher notes, activities, experimental instructions, homework tasks, lesson plans — [LINK]

  • droso4public website: collates links to online resources from across the world that can be used for outreach relating to Drosophila — [LINK]
  • Science fair and school outreach resources (figshare repository): posters, presentations, ideas for experiments and displays — [LINK]
  • Further Manchester Fly Facility resources (figshare repository): advocacy slides and presentations, helpful instructions from Hama bead patterns to fly food provision, impact documents — [LINK]

  • Films: Manchester Fly Facility (2014). YouTube channel — [LINK]
  • A Scratch video game: maintain your Drosophila stock in a constant fight against mutation (level 1), plus mites (level 2) plus infection (level 3) — [LINK1] [LINK2]

Further Outreach Resources

Info about Drosophila as a model

General fly-related outreach resources and info

  • Erica McAlister: “Metamorphosis – how insects tranformed our world: 3/5 Drosophila Melanogastronaut — [LINK]
  • A crotcheted Drosophila on Etsy (commercially available) — [LINK]
  • BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage: “In Praise of Flies“
  • Using ice to put flies to sleep for genetic crosses; YouTube video by Guy Barbato.
  • A wonderful activity for engaging children in classical genetics by Joaquín de Navascués Melero  — [LINK]

  • Fly Research Portal – Connecting Drosophila biologists to one another and the world — [LINK]
  • General outreach resources for teachers and researchers collated by the BSDB
  • YouTube video by Suzana Benitez (a project funded by the Public Engagement Fund BBSRC-University of Birmingham): How to make a fruit fly balloon
  • A Drosophila citizen science project — [LINK]
  • The “FlyGuy” books by Tedd Arnold
  • The video game: Melanogaster – catch the fly!
  • Drosophila-themed slackmojis
  • Pulver, S. R, (2011). Why flies? Inexpensive public engagement exercises to explain the value of basic biomedical research on Drosophila melanogaster. Adv Physiol Educ 35, 384-92 — [LINK]

  • A layman’s guide to synapses, including the use of flies in this context.
  • DrosAfrica website: using the fly to build an African biomedical research community — see also TREND Africa
  • Guardian article: Can the humble fruit fly help create a flourishing African scientific community?
  • Martín-Bermudo, M. D., Gebel, L., Palacios, I. M. (2017). DrosAfrica: establishing a Drosophila community in Africa. Sem Cell Dev Biol 70, 58-64 — [LINK]
  • Adedeji, A., Vicente-Crespo, M. (2017). Rejuvenating research and training in biomedical sciences in Nigeria: Drosophila melanogaster as a versatile alternative model. Arch Basic Appl Med 5, 1-10 — [LINK]
  • EMBO blog post by Isabel Palacios: Building labs with flies
  • Fly Indonesia website: Building an Indonesian Drosophila community
  • Paper with WOW effect: Ed Lewis: Making mutations with nuclear bomb explosions — [LINK]
  • Paper of high significance (first ever chromosome map): Sturtevant, A. H. (1913). The linear arrangement of six sex-linked factors in Drosophila, as shown by their mode of association. J Exp Zool 14, 43-59 — [LINK]

Movies and images about Drosophila and fly research

  • Tongue-in-cheek video: “A brief fly over“
  • A film by Imagine Science Films about the early days of Drosophila research: The fly room
  • Drosophila image collections on Pinterest – Drosophila [LINK] — Drosophila Genetics [LINK] — Drosophila are so fly [LINK] — drosophila [LINK]
  • Illustrations of Drosophila development and organs –[LINK1] – [LINK2]
  • A selection of funny Drosophila Drawings
  • Drosophila art galeries — [LINK1] – [LINK2].
  • FlyTipping – Video: Ways of tipping fruit flies

Equipment, tools, materials

Teaching Drosophila at schools & universities

  • Laws, K. M., Natale, E., Waddell, E. A., Shuda, J. R., Bashaw, G. J. (2023). DrosoPHILA: a partnership between scientists and teachers that begins in the lab and continues into city schools. eNeuro 10, ENEURO.0263-22.2022 — [PDF]
  • The droso4schools website providing online support for school lessons using Drosophila
  • See all our science communication, training and education outputs
  • Lakhotia, S., Ranganath, H. (2021) Experiments with Drosophila for biology courses. Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru, India, pp. 634 — [LINK]
  • Croshaw, D., Palmtag, M. (2019). Fruit fly genetics in a day: a guided exploration to help many large sections of beginning students uncover the secrets of sex-linked inheritance. CourseSource, 10.24918/cs.2019.39 — [LINK]
  • Elyse Bolterstein, Kathryn Kohl, Eric Stoffregen, Christina Swanson: Characterizing Drosophila mutagen sensitive alleles through a collaborative Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) — [LINK]
  • undergraduate-led research: Spana et al., 2020, G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics 10, 3387ff. — [LINK][blog]
  • Markstein, M. (2018). Drosophila workers unite! A laboratory manual for working with Drosophila. Published under CC-BY-NC
  • The Wonderful Fruit Fly, an interactive website for biology students and teachers
  • Brief guide of how to set up Drosophila melanogaster in the classroom
  • M. Burke, R. Center, L. Kelly: Laboratory Handbook: Using Drosophila melanogaster in middle and high school classrooms
  • NatLab (Freie Univ. Berlin): experiments with Drosophila for secondary schools (in German) — [LINK]
  • Genetics Otago: Resources for teaching senior school students (years 11–13)
  • Classroom activities: Measuring circadian activity in Drosophila
  • Hick, J., Eng, M., Parrotta, M., Merritt, T. (2019). Fly exercise: a simple experiment to test the physiological effects of exercise on a model organism. CourseSource — [LINK]
  • University of Leicester initiative: Fruit flies swoop into school science lessons
  • A film describing a genetic test cross: Is vestigial a sex-linked?
  • Natl. Inst. of Drug abuse: Exploring Genetic Inheritance in Drosophila
  • Exploratorium: Exhibiting mutant flies
  • Weigmann, K., Klapper, R., Strasser, T., Rickert, C., Technau, G., Jäckle, H., Janning, W., Klämbt, C. (2003). FlyMove – a new way to look at development of Drosophila. Trends Genet 19, 310-1 — [LINK]
  • Michels et al. (2017). Pavlovian conditioning of larval Drosophila: an illustrated, multilingual, hands-on manual for odor-taste associative learning in maggots. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 11 — [LINK] – [LINK2]
  • F. Carrero-Martinez and A. Méndez: Exploring Genetic Inheritance in Drosophila (K12 to undergraduate)
  • Fly resource collection: Julian’s Science Fair
  • A simulator for Drosophila genetic crosses
  • Online help for writing Punnett squares for fly genetics; read also comments on The Node
  • A science outreach resource on body size regulation for high school teachers: “Size Control Mechanisms“
  • Molly Renner, Kathryn Orzech, and Lisa Schwartz: The Study of Fruit Fly Genetics at City High School
  • Experience working in your own Virtual Fly lab
  • Prokop, A. (2013). 2nd year Drosophila developmental genetics practical — [LINK]
  • Roote J, Prokop A. (2013) How to design a genetic mating scheme: a basic training package for Drosophila genetics. G3 (Bethesda) 3, 353-8 [PDF] (Suppl. Mat.; see press releases/blogs: Manchester, Cambridge, Scienceomega, neurosciencestuff)
  • Prokop, A. (2013). A rough guide to Drosophila mating schemes. figshare, m9.figshare.106631 [LINK]
  • Fostier, M., Patel, S., Clarke, S., Prokop, A. (2015). A novel electronic assessment strategy to support applied Drosophila genetics training on university courses. G3 (Bethesda) — [LINK]
  • A classical experiment by Gräf et al.: Temperature effect on Expression of Phenotype — [LINK]
  • A classical experiment by Gräf et al.: Chromatographic Analysis of Eye Color Mutants — [LINK]
  • BIOS116 course materials at Lehigh University: Chromatography of Drosophila eye pigments [LINK]
  • Occidental College: Teacher reference pages – fly eye pigments lab [LINK]
  • Chen, J. et al. (2005). Discovery-based science education: functional genomic dissection in Drosophila by undergraduate researchers. PLoS Biol 3, e59 — [LINk1] – [LINK2]
  • Using the power of 900 undergrads to edit highly repetitive DNA sequences: Leung, W. et al. (2015). Drosophila Muller F elements maintain a distinct set of genomic properties over 40 million years of evolution. G3/Bethesda 5, 719-740 — [LINK1] – [LINK2]
  • Harrison, A. B., Oswald, M., and Sweeney, S. T. (2011). Teaching report: the use of Drosophila melanogasterlarval thermosensitive escape behaviour as a model system to demonstrate sensory function. Invert Neurosci 11, 109-12 — [LINK]
  • Optogenetic tools in the classroom: Titlow, J., Anderson, H., Cooper, R. (2014). Lights and larvae. The Science Teacher 9/14, 3-9 — [LINK1] [LINK2] [LINK3]
  • BackYard blog about optogenetics
  • A collection of Biology lessons for schools using Drosophila including PowerPoint and support materials — [LINK]
  • Heil, C. S. et al. (2012). Witnessing phenotypic and molecular evolution in the fruit fly. Evolution (N Y) 5, 629-634 — [LINK]
  • Pulver, S. R., and Berni, J. (2012). The fundamentals of flying: simple and inexpensive strategies for employingDrosophila genetics in neuroscience teaching laboratories. The Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education 11, A139-48 — [LINK]
  • Dunne, C. R. et al. (2014). Structured inquiry-based learning: Drosophila GAL4 enhancer trap characterization in an undergraduate laboratory course. PLoS Biol 12, e1002030 — [LINK]
  • Pulver, S. R., Hornstein, N. J., Land, B. L., Johnson, B. R. (2011). Optogenetics in the teaching laboratory: using channelrhodopsin-2 to study the neural basis of behavior and synaptic physiology in Drosophila. Adv Physiol Educ 35, 82-91 — [LINK]
  • Vilinsky, I., Johnson, K. G. (2012). The fundamentals of flying: simple and inexpensive strategies for employing Drosophila genetics in neuroscience teaching laboratories.The Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education11, A149-57 — [LINK]
  • Ables, E. T. (2015). Drosophila oocytes as a model for understanding meiosis: an educational primer to accompany “corolla is a novel protein that contributes to the architecture of the synaptonemal complex of Drosophila“. Genetics 199, 17-23 — [LINK]
  • Venema, D. R. (2006). Enhancing undergraduate teaching and research with a Drosophila virginizing system. CBE- Life Sciences Education — [LINK]
  • Siyad, F., Griffiths, J., Janjua, F., Jackson, E., Rodrigues, I., Kerr, F., Mackay, D., Lovestone, S. (2005). School students as Drosophila experimenters. PLoS Biology 3, e246 — [LINK]
  • Sofer, W., Tompkins, L. (1994). Drosophila genetics in the classroom. Genetics 136, 417-422 — [LINK]
  • Intra, J., Pasini, M. E. (2016). The fruit fly Drosophila as a powerful tool in teaching life sciences in middle and high school classrooms. Int J Innov Res Edu Sci 3, 288-95 — [LINK]
  • Education.com Inc. (2006-19). Fruit fly life cycle — [LINK]
  • Chippindale, A., Archer, M., Gass, E., Rose, M, Mueller, L: Laboratory Manual of Drosophila. Evolutionary Biology Research — [LINK]
  • Titlow, JS., Johnson, BR., Pulvar, SR. (2015) Light activated escape circuits: A behaviour and neurophysiology la module using Drosophila Optogenetics — [LINK]