Children who are exposed to cranial radiation therapy (CRT) to treat brain tumours are at increased risk later in life for neurocognitive, motor and seizure disorders. Current radioprotective agents are difficult to administer and have severe side effects. Thus, Barry Ganetzky and colleagues used Drosophila to model and elucidate the toxic effects of CRT during juvenile development. First, they found that irradiating fly larvae with different doses of radiation reduces the percentage of animals that survive to adulthood and impairs motor activity of surviving adults, in a dose-dependent manner. These phenotypes are paralleled by an increased expression of activated death caspase-1, a cell death marker, in adult brains. Then, using flies at different developmental stages, they found that the toxic effects of radiation exposure become more severe with decreasing larval age at time of irradiation. Notably, flies with different genetic backgrounds show different sensitivity to radiation. Thus, Drosophila represents a useful system to model CRT-induced toxicity and to dissect key molecular and genetic pathways. These, in turn, might illuminate potential targets for radioprotective purposes. Page
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July 2015
Development/DMM Virtual Meeting 2021
Welcoming new Editors to DMM
Editor-in-Chief Liz Patton wants DMM to strengthen its presence in the field of translational biology and to focus on the importance of disease mechanisms, just as much as models. To implement this vision, we are pleased to welcome new Editors Sally Dunwoodie (Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, Australia), Monkol Lek (Yale School of Medicine, USA) and Rickie Patani (Francis Crick Institute, London, UK) to the team.
Roles of the gut microbiome in colorectal cancer development
Going hand-in-hand, a new Perspective by Foegeding et al. explores the Western diet as a driver of dysbiosis in colorectal cancer while a new Review by Wang et al. focuses on microbiota-driven mechanisms that initiate sporadic colorectal cancer.
preLights – the latest disease modelling preprints
Head over to preLights for the digests of the latest preprints:
Erin McGregor highlights work by Nowicka et al. that suggests a potential connection between mitochondrial dysfunction and neurodegeneration.
Emma Wilson discusses work by Dagra et al., which highlights D2 receptors as a potential target that could be used to alleviate alpha-Synuclein pathology in Parkinson’s disease.
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