Quantitative Assessment of Eye Phenotypes for Functional Genetic Studies Using Drosophila melanogaster
AbstractAbout two-thirds of the vital genes in the Drosophila genome are involved in eye development, making the fly eye an excellent genetic system to study cellular function and development, neurodevelopment/degeneration, and complex diseases such as cancer and diabetes. We developed a novel computational method, implemented as Flynotyper software (http://flynotyper.sourceforge.net), to quantitatively assess the morphological defects in the Drosophila eye resulting from genetic alterations affecting basic cellular and developmental processes. Flynotyper utilizes a series of image processing operations to automatically detect the fly eye and the individual ommatidium, and calculates a phen…
Debating Sexual Selection and Mating Strategies
Published at full length with the title 'Reproductive behaviour: sexual selection remains the best explanation' in Science E-letters, 6 April 2006