Drosophila is a genus of flies,belonging to the family Drosophilidae,whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or pomace flies,vinegar flies,or wine flies,a reference to the characteristic of many species to linger around overripe or rotting fruit. They should not be confused with the Tephritidae,a related family,which are also called fruit flies;tephritids feed primarily on unripe or ripe fruit,with many species being regarded as destructive agricultural pests,especially the Mediterranean fruit fly.
Louse is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera,which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order,infraorder,or a parvorder,as a result of developments in phylogenetic research.
Drosophila melanogaster is a species of fly in the family Drosophilidae. The species is often referred to as the fruit fly or lesser fruit fly,or less commonly the "vinegar fly" or "pomace fly". Starting with Charles W. Woodworth's 1901 proposal of the use of this species as a model organism,D. melanogaster continues to be widely used for biological research in genetics,physiology,microbial pathogenesis,and life history evolution. As of 2017,five Nobel Prizes have been awarded to drosophilists for their work using the insect.
The head louse is an obligate ectoparasite of humans. Head lice are wingless insects that spend their entire lives on the human scalp and feed exclusively on human blood. Humans are the only known hosts of this specific parasite,while chimpanzees and bonobos host a closely related species,Pediculus schaeffi. Other species of lice infest most orders of mammals and all orders of birds.
Psyllidae,the jumping plant lice or psyllids,are a family of small plant-feeding insects that tend to be very host-specific,i.e. each plant-louse species only feeds on one plant species (monophagous) or feeds on a few closely related plants (oligophagous). Together with aphids,phylloxerans,scale insects and whiteflies,they form the group called Sternorrhyncha,which is considered to be the most "primitive" group within the true bugs (Hemiptera). They have traditionally been considered a single family,Psyllidae,but recent classifications divide the group into a total of seven families;the present restricted definition still includes more than 70 genera in the Psyllidae. Psyllid fossils have been found from the Early Permian before the flowering plants evolved. The explosive diversification of the flowering plants in the Cretaceous was paralleled by a massive diversification of associated insects,and many of the morphological and metabolic characters that the flowering plants exhibit may have evolved as defenses against herbivorous insects.
Michael Ashburner was an English biologist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Genetics at University of Cambridge. He was also the former joint-head and co-founder of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and a Fellow of Churchill College,Cambridge.
The Anopheles gambiae complex consists of at least seven morphologically indistinguishable species of mosquitoes in the genus Anopheles. The complex was recognised in the 1960s and includes the most important vectors of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa,particularly of the most dangerous malaria parasite,Plasmodium falciparum. It is one of the most efficient malaria vectors known. The An. gambiae mosquito additionally transmits Wuchereria bancrofti which causes lymphatic filariasis,a symptom of which is elephantiasis.
Edward Fred Knipling was an American entomologist,who along with his longtime colleague Raymond C. Bushland,received the 1992 World Food Prize for their collaborative achievements in developing the sterile insect technique for eradicating or suppressing the threat posed by pests to the livestock and crops that contribute to the world's food supply. Knipling's contributions included the parasitoid augmentation technique,insect control methods involving the medication of the hosts,and various models of total insect population management. Knipling was best known as the inventor of the sterile insect technique (SIT),an autocidal theory of total insect population management. The New York Times Magazine proclaimed on January 11,1970,that "Knipling...has been credited by some scientists as having come up with 'the single most original thought in the 20th century.'"
FlyBase is an online bioinformatics database and the primary repository of genetic and molecular data for the insect family Drosophilidae. For the most extensively studied species and model organism,Drosophila melanogaster,a wide range of data are presented in different formats.
Forensic entomology has three sub-fields:urban,stored product and medico-criminal entomologies. This article focuses on medico-criminal entomology and how DNA is analyzed with various blood-feeding insects.
Psocodea is a taxonomic group of insects comprising the bark lice,book lice and parasitic lice. It was formerly considered a superorder,but is now generally considered by entomologists as an order. Despite the greatly differing appearance of parasitic lice (Phthiraptera),they are believed to have evolved from within the former order Psocoptera,which contained the bark lice and book lice,now found to be paraphyletic. They are often regarded as the most primitive of the hemipteroids. Psocodea contains around 11,000 species,divided among four suborders and more than 70 families. They range in size from 1–10 millimetres (0.04–0.4 in) in length.
Insects are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton,a three-part body,three pairs of jointed legs,compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels;some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals;they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million;potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments,although only a small number of species reside in the oceans,which are dominated by another arthropod group,crustaceans,which recent research has indicated insects are nested within.
A genetically modified (GM) insect is an insect that has been genetically modified,either through mutagenesis,or more precise processes of transgenesis,or cisgenesis. Motivations for using GM insects include biological research purposes and genetic pest management. Genetic pest management capitalizes on recent advances in biotechnology and the growing repertoire of sequenced genomes in order to control pest populations,including insects. Insect genomes can be found in genetic databases such as NCBI,and databases more specific to insects such as FlyBase,VectorBase,and BeetleBase. There is an ongoing initiative started in 2011 to sequence the genomes of 5,000 insects and other arthropods called the i5k. Some Lepidoptera have been genetically modified in nature by the wasp bracovirus.
Drosophila suzukii,commonly called the spotted wing drosophila or SWD,is a fruit fly. D. suzukii,originally from southeast Asia,is becoming a major pest species in America and Europe,because it infests fruit early during the ripening stage,in contrast with other Drosophila species that infest only rotting fruit.
Pthirus gorillae or gorilla louse is a species of parasitic sucking louse that afflicts gorillas. It is found in the African continent,specifically in Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo. P. gorillae and P. pubis are the only known species that belong to the genus Pthirus,often incorrectly spelled as Phthirus. It is suggested that it is transmitted among its hosts by social grooming,shared bedding and sexual contact.
Ronald J. Konopka (1947-2015) was an American geneticist who studied chronobiology. He made his most notable contribution to the field while working with Drosophila in the lab of Seymour Benzer at the California Institute of Technology. During this work,Konopka discovered the period (per) gene,which controls the period of circadian rhythms.
Christos Louis,nicknamed Kitsos,is a Greek Molecular Geneticist. He graduated from the Medical School of the University of Marburg in 1974 and joined the team of Prof. C.E. Sekeris,first at Marburg and then at the German Cancer Research Center Heidelberg,obtaining his doctoral degree in Cell biology from Heidelberg University in 1977. His work focuses on Genomics and Bioinformatics of insects and vector-borne/tropical diseases.
The Morganellaceae are a family of Gram-negative bacteria that include some important human pathogens formerly classified as Enterobacteriaceae. This family is a member of the order Enterobacterales in the class Gammaproteobacteria of the phylum Pseudomonadota. Genera in this family include the type genus Morganella,along with Arsenophonus,Cosenzaea,Moellerella,Photorhabdus,Proteus,Providencia and Xenorhabdus.
Cyp6g1 or DDT-R is an insecticide resistance gene for resistance to DDT in Drosophila melanogaster. It belongs to the cytochrome P450 family and is located in chromosome 2R. Following up their earlier work,Daborn et al 2002 find the DDT-R gene induces overtranscription of Cyp6g1,of which there are 4 duplicates. They also find several substrates of Cyp6g1,namely DDT,lufenuron,and nitenpyram.
Cytochrome P450,family 6,also known as CYP6,is a cytochrome P450 family found in Insect genome. CYP6 and CYP9,another insect CYP family,belong to the same clan as mammalian CYP3 and CYP5 families.
