A large-scale screen in Drosophila cells has shown how RNA
interference can provide insights into the pathways controlling
cell morphology. When thinking of genetic screens in Drosophila,
the Nobel-prize-winning screens for embryonic developmental
phenotypes spring to mind. Loss-of-function mutational analysis
has proved to be a powerful approach for dissecting complex
processes such as morphogenesis and wing development. But
historically the fruitfly community has focused much less on the
study of cells in culture. All that may now be about to change.
In this issue of Journal of Biology , Amy Kiger and colleagues
describe the results of a powerful strategy for conducting high-
throughput systematic loss-of-function screens in Drosophila
tissue-culture cells (see 'The bottom line' box for a summary of
the work). Picking apart signaling pathways The study was led by
Norbert Perrimon, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator
who runs a Drosophila laboratory at Harvard Medical School in
Boston, USA. Perrimo