Animal Transgenesis: A Laboratory Primer on Genetics

This lab-based course uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to introduce students to experimental biology and the wonder of scientific discovery. It teaches the use of modern molecular biology methods, Mendelian genetics, and immuno-histochemistry to characterize novel fruit fly strains. Students isolate genomic DNA and perform standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and inverse PCR, in addition to learning DNA primer design. These methods are applied to clone a lexA-based enhancer trap in the Drosophila genome and the novel data is analyzed using standard bioinformatics tools. Students characterize the expression pattern of their lexA enhancer trap, apply immunohistochemistry, and analyze via epifluorescence microscopy. Students also perform fly intercrosses and are introduced to the existing tool kit of meiotic recombination suppression in Drosophila. Further genetic methods, such as the UAS (upstream activation sequence)/Gal4 and lexA/lexAop binary expression systems, are used. Some class time is devoted to teaching underlying biological and experimental principles that students then apply. At the end of the course, students give scientific presentations, summarizing their findings.