Lords of the flies

Drosophila melanogaster, 
by André Karwath

“Let’s do a screen.” It’s a phrase bandied about in laboratories all over the world from scientists at all stages of their careers. However, the power of genetic screens was not fully realised until the late 1970s, when Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus performed their famous screen that identified mutations affecting Drosophila developmental patterning.

The first results of the Nüsslein-Volhard and Weischaus screens were published in a Nature paper in late 1980. Despite having incomplete results, the work presented is remarkable in that it identified and categorised a majority of the segmentation patterning genes in Drosophila. In designating different levels of organisation in the developing embryo, this screen helped elucidate our current understanding of development. While it certainly wasn’t the first screen, its scale and breadth laid the groundwork for not only future studies in Drosophila and other models, but arguably started the field of developmental genetics.

• The Nature paper

In 1984, Nüsslein-Volhard, Wieschaus, and colleagues published the complete results of their screen. These were published in a total of three papers, one for the 2nd chromosome, one for the 3rd, and one for X and the 4th chromosome (the latter of which is vestigial in flies).

Some historical perspective from Wolfgang Driever (a graduate student of CNV) and Janni Nüsslein-Volhard herself