Tools and models
Our model
Fruit flies are a very good model to study embryonic development. Not only it is completed in only 24 hours, it also allows scientists to study many organisms at the same time. Its maintenance is cheaper than other model organisms, and there are many tools generated by the scientific community that allow us to track cells and tissues and to manipulate their functions. Furthermore, we can use flies to learn about physiology and to model and understand pathological conditions.
Our tools
We combine fluorescent reporters to study interactions between cells and tissues. For this we use three different contexts: We use embryonic development where we can do live imaging and analyse the dynamics of tissue development. We also look at larval development where we can assess, for instance, the functionality of the respiratory system. In addition, we use embryonic primary cultures where we can mimic extracellular environments and see how they modify cell behaviours. We are also moving towards quantitative approaches by using different image analyses pipelines to obtain more information out of the experiments we generate.