Lord of the flies

A new interactive documentation gives exclusive insights into our fruit fly facility.

March 25, 2015

Fruit flies – for most of us they are nothing more than tiny nuisances, who inevitably invade our kitchens in summer. Many scientists, however, consider them their favorite pets. Drosophila melanogaster, as the common fruit fly is called in laboratories worldwide, has been instrumental for many breakthrough discoveries in the field of Genetics. Fruit flies are short-lived, easy to genetically manipulate and represent a good model for more complex organisms such as mammals.

In a new interactive documentation Dr. Plamen Georgiev, who heads the fly facility at the MPI-IE, gives exclusive insights into his work. Amongst other things he explains how flies are fed in the laboratory and why they are great for genetic manipulation. Furthermore, users of the facility talk about their fly-based research and share their best fly stories.

This project was carried out in collaboration with students of the Hochschule Offenburg: Artur Bauer, Sven Heper, Konradin Köchling and Maxim Maier. Creating an interactive documentation on the topic of Human-Animal Interactions was a term assignment in the course “Media Texts” by Prof. Daniel Fetzner.

To start the interactive documentation, please click here.

 

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