Welcome to the Fly Facility
Our Fly Facility is one of the largest in Europe, catering for 10 research groups and consuming 1 million tubes and bottles annually.
The Fly Lab (Room 115) has bench spaces for 24 people, which are shared in the course of a year by almost 100 people.
Within the Fly Lab we have four constant temperature (CT) rooms (18°C or 25°C and 70% RH) and a microinjection room. Each culture room has space for 15,000 stocks.
The media service (Room B2) produces an average of 20,000 tubes, bottles and agar plates weekly.
And of course the glassware washing service (B19) has to cope with the thousands of fly tubes and bottles that we use every day.
We also have a quarantine room located in the attic, as far from the Fly Lab as possible. This is where new fly strains from other labs, or caught from the wild, are introduced into the Department and observed in isolation until we are sure they are free of disease and parasites.
If you wish to use the Fly Facility please introduce yourself to us and arrange a time for an induction. For further information on the use of the Fly Lab, please download these documents before your induction:
Risk Assessments and SOPs relevant to fly workers can be found in the Safety folder on the fly lab iMac and in the purple safety box file. Before your induction, please download and read whichever are appropriate for your work. If you are using techniques that are not covered by this list please write your own risk assessments.
Some fly groups have published their stock lists on the fly lab iMac in the desktop folder 'current stock lists'. Please put your stock list here too.
Staff in the Fly Facility are listed on a separate page
Embryo injection service
We now offer an embryo injection service (P and phiC31) for Cambridge fly people, and others on request. We can provide balanced stocks if required. See DNA requirements HERE, list of phiC31 stocks HERE and price list HERE.
Fly-pushing and stock-keeping service
We are also offering a fly-pushing and stock-keeping service for Cambridge fly people. For stock-keeping all we ask from you is a stock list, in Excel or Filemaker ...and the flies, 2 tubes of each stock. Included in the monthly charge we will maintain the stock list, make the stocks constantly available to you and send stocks to other labs as required. We can discuss individual needs for fly-pushing (stock construction, screening, etc). See price list HERE
Rates
Rates for the Embryo injection service, and for the Fly-pushing and stock-keeping service can be found HERE. Please contact John Roote for further information.
An information sheet on media costs for grant applications is also now available on Camtools, ie Raven-passworded.
Fly stocks available from the Fly Lab
Please click on this link - Excel file Updated October 2011
Reference books (available from the Fly Lab):
- Drosophila, A Laboratory Handbook. 2nd edition. Michael Ashburner, Kent Golic and Scott Hawley. CSHL Press, 2005
- Drosophila: Methods and Protocols (Methods in Molecular Biology). Christian Dahmann. Humana Press, 2008
- Fly Pushing: The theory and practice of Drosophila genetics. 2nd edition. Ralph Greenspan. CSHL Press, 2004
- Drosophila Protocols. William Sullivan, Michael Ashburner and Scott Hawley. CSHL Press, 2000
- Drosophila. A Practical Approach. 2nd edition. David Roberts. OUP, 1998
- Drosophila. A guide to species identification and use. Therese Markow and Patrick O'Grady. Academic Press, 2006
- Imaginal Discs. The Genetic and Cellular Logic of Pattern Formation. Lewis I. Held. CUP, 2005
- Won for all. How the Drosophila genome was sequenced. Michael Ashburner. CSHL Press, 2006
- The Drosophilidae (Diptera) of Fennoscandia and Denmark (Fauna Entomologica Scandinavica). Gerhard Bächli, Carlos R. Vilela, Stefan Andersson Escher and Anssi Saura. BRILL, 2004
Useful links:
| FlyBase | flybase.org/ |
| Bloomington Stock Center | flystocks.bio.indiana.edu/ |
| Drosophila Species Stock Center | stockcenter.ucsd.edu |
| FlyMine | www.flymine.org/ |
| FlyProt | www.flyprot.org/ |
| DrosDel | www.drosdel.org.uk/ |
| Exelixis Collection at Harvard | drosophila.med.harvard.edu/ |
| DGRC, Kyoto Stock Center | www.dgrc.kit.ac.jp/en/ |
| BDGP, Gene Disruption Project | flypush.imgen.bcm.tmc.edu/pscreen/ |
| FlyTrap: GFP protein trap database | flytrap.med.yale.edu/ |
| FlyView: image database | flyview.uni-muenster.de/ |
| Fly Culture | Fly Culture page |
| Won for all [Michael Ashburner's book] | www.lablit.com/article/96 |
Page updated 31 January 2012