Genome manipulation by homologous recombination in Drosophila

By utilising a cell's recombinational machinery, researchers in many different model organisms have been able to perform gene targeting experiments in which specific sequence alterations are introduced into virtually any endogenous gene. Not only can functional knock-outs be generated by gene targeting, interesting alleles with mutations encoding specific amino acid replacements can also be made. A practical gene targeting method has only recently become available for Drosophila. This article reviews the Drosophila gene targeting method, with emphases placed on different approaches that are being used to generate different mutations.