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About the Fruit fly: With a history of study of almost a century, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is perhaps the best characterized multicellular organism. The fly was first studied by Thomas Hunt Morgan, an American embryologist at Columbia University, in order to try to understand the mechanisms of inheritance and the role of genes in this process. As such, it was the first genetic model organism, and over its long history of use in the lab, a dazzling array of genetic tools and techniques have been developed to facilitate laboratory study.  D. melanogaster close up The genome of D. melanogaster has been sequenced and available since 1999. Preliminary analysis of the genome showed a close correspondence to the genomes of vertebrates such as mouse and human; about 60 percent of genes are conserved between fly and human. However, compared to vertebrates, the fly has a relatively compact genome, meaning that there is relatively less noncoding sequence. The reduced complexity of the noncoding regions allows for easier determination of their roles in the regulation of gene expression.
Studies at CIG are currently focused on the noncoding regions of D. melanogaster, as well as a number of Drosophila subspecies. Comparing the genomes of these closely related species will allow for the identification of conserved regulatory sequences, and examination of networks of these regulatory regions will facilitate our understanding of how complex genetic programs of multicellular organisms are enacted.
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Organisms 
