Hatching Drosophila Babies (Trial 1)

Nov 02, 2019 • 1:11 PM UTC

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Mitali

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Ever since I joined CHG, Bangalore as a Master’s student, I’ve been surrounded by fruit flies in the lab. This is my first time handling these creatures and I am always amazed by how well these flies have been taken advantage of.
One of the new things I’ve learnt here is to culture fruit flies and set up their crosses with different mutants. While I collected virgin flies for my crosses, I noticed that CO2 and ether treatments lead to expulsion of the egg from the abdomen of female Drosophila.

The fly looks exactly like this with the egg partially or almost completely expelled. (Image source: JAL COOKE I’ve been wanting to set up a time lapse with Drosophila eggs since a while now.
What I first wanted to check was whether the eggs that are expelled after anesthesising the flies even hatch. If they do hatch, I could use these eggs to set up a time lapse.
So, I collected the eggs and observed them for a few hours and surprisingly, they were actually developing!
The next day I collected a few more eggs and then set up a time lapse.
To my disappointment, the eggs dried up very soon :(( but I did capture some action!

4x time lapse of the egg.

I’ve gotten a few tips to image these eggs better. Will post the trial 2 soon 🙂
P.s: The fly with tiny wings in the featured image is a virgin fly. It has just hatched out of a pupa and hasn’t opened its wings yet.
Trial 2 will be with dechorionated eggs and some PBS to avoid dessication. Stay tuned!
~Have Fun Foldscoping!
Mitali Patil
Master’s student
Centre For Human Genetics,Bangalore.
Formerly at: Ramnarain Ruia Autonomous College.