The Drosophila Stock Centers and their implications for developmental biology

Mutations are central to functional analyses of genes and their products. In vertebrates, gene clones may be readily available, but there is often a lack of mutations. In Drosophila melanogaster, which has been used in genetic research for almost a decade, mutations defining thousands of genes have been isolated. Much of the basic genetic knowledge available today has been obtained from fundamental experiments done on the fruitfly. This year's Nobel laureates in physiology and medicine, E.B. Lewis, C. Nüsslein-Volhard and E. Wieschaus, were rewarded for their important contributions to our understanding of the genetic control of early embryonic development where they used Drosophila melanogaster as a model system. Such experiments often result in huge numbers of mutant strains that should be maintained to aid in the localization and functional analyses of new genes in the future. For this reason Drosophila Stock Centers have been established in Europe and North America. Japan is also planning to build an Asian Drosophila Stock Center. The objectives of Drosophila Stock Centers are to maintain strains with well characterized mutations, check their constitution and distribute strains together with information about their genetic defects to research groups around the world. The European Commission has recently acknowledged the importance of stock centers as part of the biological research infrastructure by supporting the European Drosophila Stock Centre in Umeä.