Tanabe M
Introduction:
Despite having no mammary glands, Drosophila is a very useful model for conducting research on
molecular mechanisms as well as the regulation of transcription including epigenetic changes associated
with breast cancer development. Drosophila has been used as one of the model systems since it was
first introduced by Thomas Morgan, a pioneer in genetics for the study of heredity, in the early 20th
century [1]. The complete mapping of all Drosophila chromosomes was completed by Dr. Morgan and
his colleagues. Drosophila has extremely large polytene chromosomes in the salivary glands. These
polytene chromosomes have enabled us to directly observe chromosomal structures and band-patterns
including euchromatin and heterochromatin since the early 1960s [2,3]. Most notably, the loci involved
in gene activation can be visualized as chromosome puffing [3,4]. When chromosomes including puffs
are immuno-stained using antibodies against factors associated with transcription and chromatin
structures such as RNA polymerase II and histones, we can evaluate the state of transcription as well as
modification of histone tails which are epigenetic markers on genes of interest [4,5]. In Drosophila,
Position-effect variegation (PEV) which is observed when a gene normally in euchromatin is juxtaposed
with heterochromatin, is also a very useful phenotype for analyzing factors which can convert chromatin
structures from euchromatin to heterochromatin or vice versa [6].
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