Study: Fruit fly can be an alternative animal model

Mangaluru: The Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly, can be used as an alternative animal model, instead of a mouse, for research related to inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), finds a study from a team of researchers at Mangalore University (MU).
The findings of the research paper, ‘Dextran sodium sulfate alters antioxidant status in the gut affecting the survival of Drosophila melanogaster’ were published in 3 ‘Biotech Journal’, of ‘Springer Nature’.
Postgraduate students Nishal Keshav, Ramyalakshmi Ammankallu, and Shashidhar from the department of applied zoology, MU, under the supervision of Avinash Kudva, department of biochemistry and Shamprasad Varija Raghu, neurogenetics lab, department of applied zoology, MU, modeled human intestinal colitis in fruit fly, using a different genetic and pharmacological approach. The co-authors of the study are Jagdish Gopal Paithankar of Nitte Deemed to be University, Manjeshwar Shrinath Baliga, Mangalore Institute of Oncology, Mangaluru, and Rajashekar K Patil, MU.
The MU team’s study outcomes, are that the common fruit fly, a genetic animal model, shares around 75% sequence similarity with genes causing different diseases in humans. In addition, the different genetic tool kits to regulate gene expression levels available in Drosophila research fields, make them versatile genetic model organisms for various biological studies. Many features of digestion and absorption appear to be conserved between flies and mammals.