Table 1 Advantages and disadvantages of using Drosophila as a model organism for neurodegenerative diseases like AD
From: Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism for Alzheimer’s disease
Advantage | Disadvantage |
|---|---|
No ethical problems/no restrictions according to animal protection laws | Brain anatomy, cardiovascular system and respiration systems differs substantially from humans |
Easy and cheap to maintain in large quantities, time and cost effective handling | No easy measure of complex behavior |
Genetic manipulation is fast and inexpensive (3 month, < $ 500 per transgene) | Only basic measures of cognitive decline |
Plethora of available resources/stocks (e.g. genome-wide RNAi-library) | Sometimes poor conservation of proteins/protein function |
Short generation time (~10 days), short life span (2–3 month) - > easy to use for screens | Maintenance as living cultures only, no permanent conservation (e.g. frozen stocks) possible |
Fully sequenced and annotated genome | Less complex and adaptive immune system as in vertebrates |
Good conservation of basic signaling pathways and cellular processes in general | Effects of drugs on the organism might differ strongly (e.g. conversion of pro-toxins to toxins in liver) |
Low redundancy/reduced number of paralogous genes compared to vertebrates | |
Probably best analyzed/understood multi- cellular organism | |
More complex organism compare to C. elegans and yeast | |
Balancer chromosomes allow the maintenance of mutations/trangenes without genotyping |