Department of Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710, USA.
Circ Res. 2011 Sep 16;109(7):794-806. doi: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.111.244897.
The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has been used to study genetics, development, and signaling for nearly a century, but only over the past few decades has this tremendous resource been the focus of cardiovascular research. Fly genetics offers sophisticated transgenic systems, molecularly defined genomic deficiencies, genome-wide transgenic RNAi lines, and numerous curated mutants to perform genetic screens. As a genetically tractable model, the fly facilitates gene discovery and can complement mammalian models of disease. The circulatory system in the fly comprises well-defined sets of cardiomyocytes, and methodological advances have permitted accurate characterization of cardiac morphology and function. Thus, fly genetics and genomics offer new approaches for gene discovery of adult cardiac phenotypes to identify evolutionarily conserved molecular signals that drive cardiovascular disease.
果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）已被用于研究遗传学、发育和信号转导近一个世纪，但直到过去几十年，这种巨大的资源才成为心血管研究的焦点。果蝇遗传学提供了复杂的转基因系统、分子定义的基因组缺失、全基因组转基因 RNAi 系和许多经过精心修饰的突变体，可用于进行遗传筛选。作为一种遗传上易于操作的模型，果蝇有助于基因的发现，并可补充疾病的哺乳动物模型。果蝇的循环系统由定义明确的心肌细胞组成，方法学的进步使得对心脏形态和功能的精确描述成为可能。因此，果蝇遗传学和基因组学为发现成年心脏表型的基因提供了新的方法，以鉴定驱动心血管疾病的进化保守的分子信号。
