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I'm a grad student rotating in a drosophila neurobiology lab. I'd like to do a little self-study to bring myself up to speed. What are some basic, essential drosophila methods and applications? And good resources to learn them?

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Methods for what kind of analysis? Behavioral? Genetic? Biochemical? Evolution? Aging? Development? Or do you want things only related to neurobiology? In that case, again, what kind of analysis? Neurotoxicity? Addiction? Learning? Plasticity? Your question is too broad to be constructively answered. Please edit it to make it more specific. – terdon Jan 11 at 17:21
sounds like you are looking for low tech basic methods, which most fly labs continue to use in conjunction with more recent molecular biology. Seymour Benzer did some great work. The classic method is to get a strain of flies which has well known genetic traits, put them in bottles where they can breed, then apply selection to them, see how often given traits breed through. He found the first behavioral phenotypes. plosbiology.org/article/… – shigeta Jan 12 at 16:07

closed as not a real question by kmm, jonsca, rg255, Mad Scientist Jan 12 at 9:09

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2 Answers

Ask around in the lab. Grad school is for learning, and one of the best ways of doing that is by asking questions of people who are likely to know the answers, then listening to what they say. Talk to the PI. Hang around with the post-docs and 3rd/4th/5th (and on and on...) -year students. Nobody expects you to have all of, or really any of the answers at this point (unless you've been there for 3 months already), and most scientists love to talk about their work, so engage them. It certainly shows initiative, and will get you noticed if it's a large place. In the end, it's much more helpful and relevant than posting on message boards or calling tech support. Good luck!

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GIYF. Top two hits searching on 'drosophila methods and applications':

http://flystocks.bio.indiana.edu/Fly_Work/culturing.htm

http://www.springerprotocols.com/BookToc/doi/10.1007/978-1-59745-583-1

As @terdon wrote, without more specifics, very difficult to do more than that.

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