Genome Of Fruit Fly Sequenced

Updated 6:28 PM ET March 24, 2000NEW YORK, Mar 24 (Reuters Health) -- For the first time, an international team of scientists has determined essentially all of the genome, or DNA sequence, of Drosophila melanogaster -- the fruit fly. In addition to being a pest found in kitchens around the world, the tiny organism is one of the most studied creatures in the history of biology. The new finding may shed light on the genes that cause human illness. The feat was a collaborative effort between Celera Genomics, a company in Rockville, Maryland, and publicly funded researchers at the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project, a consortium of researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, the University of California at Berkeley, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and Carnegie Institution of Washington. The project was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The fruit fly is the largest organism to date to be completely sequenced and the first with a central nervous system. The finding will "provide the foundation for a new era of sophisticated functional studies," the researchers report in the March 24th issue of Science. In the journal, the scientists describe for the first time the full genome sequence of D. melanogaster, which was obtained using a whole-genome shotgun sequencing strategy. The strategy is similar to that used by Celera in its ongoing effort to decipher the human genome, while alternate methods are being used by government researchers to try to achieve the same goal. The Drosophila genome contains approximately 13,600 genes that encode a diverse group of molecules. The scientists found that the Drosophila genome contains many genes -- about 175 -- that were similar to certain disease-associated genes in humans, lead author of the report, Dr. Mark Adams, told Reuters Health. "Many of those weren't previously known to exist in Drosophila," he said. This finding suggests that Drosophila may be a more useful tool than expected for studying the cellular and molecular processes underlying human disease, said Adams, the vice president of genome programs at Celera. "The fly Drosophila melanogaster is one of the most intensively studied organisms in biology and serves as a model system for the investigation of many developmental and cellular processes common to higher eukaryotes, including humans," the researchers report in the journal. "Even though the human genome is much more complex, the fruit fly is a lot more like humans than many of us may want to acknowledge," co-author, Dr. Steven Scherer, of Baylor University, notes elsewhere. "We share many of the same genes and biochemical pathways." Adams said that "something that we learn in Drosophila is a good candidate for that information being applicable in humans." The reported genome sequence contains a few "gaps" that the scientists are working to close. Once this work is finished, "the diversity of predicted genes and gene products will serve as the raw material for continued experimental work aimed at unraveling the molecular mechanisms underlying development, behavior, aging and many other processes," they conclude. The genome will be available to researchers free of charge, according to Celera. SOURCE: Science 2000;287:2185-2195, 2218-2220.

Go Back To Altgenesis Home Page