Drosophila in the house

For the past month I have been consumed by a new hobby - raising fruit flies! No, not from the rotten fruit in my kitchen, although I have those too. I took on the task of rearing some Drosophila for Tim's Biology students to use in genetic experiments. Even though I haven't worked in the fruit fly lab for over 10 years, I thought it would be fun to share some of my bug skills.

Oh yes, I have skills.

I brought back supplies (fly food and tubes) from Carolina Biological in September, and was able to get wild type (red eyed) and white eyed fruit flies from two labs in Beijing. It was a little surprising how easy it was to get the flies - I wrote a couple emails, and two days later flies arrived in the mail. One of the researchers packed them in a box of dried mushrooms to disguise the tubes full of fly larvae from the postal service. Unfortunately he had no suggestions on how I might cook the mushrooms. Oh well.

Every few days for the past month I take care of my little pets, who live in a box in the study/guest room. We keep it nice and toasty in there so the flies stay happy. Tim likes to point out that it is the only room in the house where I turn the heat on, but we can put on sweaters! Or just stay in the study!

Here is my work space, at the computer desk:


And some fly tubes:


It has definitely been a learning curve to remember all of my fruit fly tricks from ages ago. And I discovered a whole new level of mommy-distraction trying to sort flies while Milan fights for my attention. Milan does get in on the fun; he can identify red eyed and white eyed flies and helps make their food tubes.

So today was the first fly lab at school and the 12 ninth grade students learned how to make food, put the flies to sleep, identify males and females, and do a genetic cross. If all goes well they'll have progeny in two weeks and will be able to figure out the genotype of their parent flies.

Hope you all had a happy and yummy Thanksgiving! We had a feast with the entire school staff at a friend's house last night, complete with two turkeys and all the trimmings. I am feeling very thankful for all of our wonderful friends here!