Isabel Palacios studies fruit flies. Not because she has any particular interest in flies themselves, but because they help her answer fundamental questions about animal development. Most animals start life as a single, roughly spherical cell. Somehow the symmetry of that cell gets lost and you end up with an animal that has a distinct head and tail, front and back. The curious thing is that even in that first cell \u2013 even before it\u2019s fertilised \u2013 microscopic cellular machinery is working to create subtle asymmetries that prepare the cell for development. Palacios, an EMBL alumna and group leader at the University of Cambridge, wants to understand how this happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that\u2019s not the only ambition she has for her flies. As a founder of the DrosAfrica project, she believes the fruit fly, Drosophila<\/em>, can play an important role in developing the research infrastructure of an entire continent, helping African scientists undertake high-impact projects and form collaborations around the world. The aim of the project is to teach scientists how to use the fly as a model system for studying human disease, ultimately creating an interconnected community of Drosophila<\/em> researchers in Africa. This involves organising local workshops to train scientists, and providing basic equipment such as microscopes and antibodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I find it the most satisfying project I have<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople who don\u2019t know about the fly ask: \u2018How could it help with African research?\u2019\u201d says Palacios. \u201cBut actually there are a lot of questions you can answer.\u201d Drosophila<\/em> has long been used in genetic studies and allows researchers to gain insight into many types of human disease, including cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer\u2019s or Parkinson\u2019s. Flies can also be used in the study of host-pathogen interactions, including infection by viruses or Plasmodium<\/em> \u2013 the organism that causes malaria. They therefore have a broad range of uses in basic biomedical research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other thing about fruit flies \u2013 as some of us have had the misfortune to discover outside the lab \u2013 is that they reproduce rapidly, without human assistance. This means you can produce adequate numbers at low cost, and very little specialist equipment is required to look after them. There are also many companies and university departments offering gene editing services for Drosophila<\/em>, so it\u2019s easy, fast, and inexpensive to obtain flies with the genes you want to study. Palacios points out that the community is very open and willing to share, so if there\u2019s a particular type of fly that you\u2019d like to research, there will often be someone in another part of the world who can send it to you, and the cost of shipping is very low. All these things make Drosophila<\/em> an ideal organism to work with on a limited budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suddenly you could do competitive science using the fly<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Palacios compares the situation in Africa to that of Spain forty years ago, when the country underwent a period of rapid development. It was at this time that Antonio Garc\u00eda-Bellido, a developmental biologist, began training a few Drosophila<\/em> researchers who went on to train others, creating a large community of fly researchers in Spain. Some also went abroad to start their own research groups. \u201cSuddenly you could do competitive science using the fly, because it\u2019s very inexpensive and very easy to learn,\u201d says Palacios. \u201cIn terms of research, it helped put Spain in the international picture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was against this background that Palacios grew up. At the time, Madrid was the only university in Spain that offered any courses in molecular biology, so she initially enrolled for a general biology degree at the University of La Laguna in Tenerife. \u201cBut,\u201d she says, \u201cany time they touched on a more cell biological aspect, that was what really interested me.\u201d After the first year, she decided to make the move to Madrid. \u201cFinancially, it was quite a stretch for my parents,\u201d she explains. \u201cBut once I was there, I loved it. I knew that this was what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She went on to study for a PhD at EMBL in Heidelberg. \u201cI applied thinking there\u2019s no way they\u2019ll invite me there, but they did, and then there\u2019s no way they\u2019ll offer me a place, but they did. I\u2019d already started a PhD in Madrid, but my supervisor, Juan Ort\u00edn, said \u2018Take this chance, it\u2019s a really good one,\u2019 so that\u2019s where I went,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cSuddenly I was at one of the best molecular biology institutes in Europe! I couldn\u2019t believe my luck and I\u2019ve been lucky ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe one day we could even form an organisation of several African countries working together<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Palacios explains that the idea for DrosAfrica came from a chance meeting between one of her colleagues, Lucia Prieto Godino, and Sadiq Yusuf, a professor from Kampala International University (KIU) in Uganda. Godino and Yusuf decided to organise a workshop at KIU that would teach Yusuf and his students the skills needed to work with Drosophila<\/em>. Palacios was invited to lead some of the sessions at the workshop. \u201cIt was clear that these scientists had a great desire for knowledge and wanted to do good research,\u201d she says, \u201cbut they didn\u2019t have the money or the facilities.\u201d Palacios and her colleagues realised that Drosophila<\/em> could help these researchers \u2013 and others in Africa \u2013 achieve their goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, they\u2019ve organised several workshops in Uganda and Kenya, and more are planned in Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt. Three years into the project, they\u2019re seeing attendees from the workshops setting up fly labs at their own institutions. They\u2019ve had master\u2019s students successfully defend their theses on Drosophila<\/em> and there are PhD students who will soon be doing the same. A network of scientists from several African countries is also developing. They\u2019ve started organising their own workshops, and Palacios hopes they\u2019ll soon be running their labs and applying for grants independently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another idea she\u2019s considering is the establishment of an institute for basic biomedical research in Uganda, so instead of arranging workshops in several countries, scientists could come to a central hub where they would develop the skills needed to work with inexpensive model systems like Drosophila<\/em>. Over time, their research could expand to other model systems and a broader range of cell biological techniques. \u201cBut it has to be from the inside,\u201d she says, \u201cwith scientists talking to their governments and trying to get that kind of research institute going. Maybe one day we could even form an organisation of several African countries working together, similar to EMBL in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I ask her about some of the difficulties she\u2019s faced with the project, she answers without hesitation. \u201cThe challenges are always time and funds. For most of us, this is not our main job and we also need to focus on the other aspects of being a scientist \u2013 publishing papers and getting grants,\u201d she explains. \u201cBut with DrosAfrica, what you put in and what you get out is a lot more balanced than it usually is in science. I find it the most satisfying project I have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Flies can do a lot for science, inside and outside the lab. EMBL alumna Isabel Palacios explains how<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":9232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,17593],"tags":[80,64,478],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-9203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-people-perspectives","tag-alumni","tag-cell-biology","tag-drosophila"],"acf":{"article_intro":" Flies can do a lot for science, inside and outside the lab. EMBL alumna Isabel Palacios explains how<\/p>\n","related_links":[{"link_description":"Project DrosAfrica","link_url":"http:\/\/drosafrica.org"},{"link_description":"Palacios Lab at the University of Cambridge","link_url":"http:\/\/www.zoo.cam.ac.uk\/departments\/palacios-lab"},{"link_description":"EMBL Alumni Relations Programme ","link_url":"https:\/\/www.embl.de\/aboutus\/alumni\/index.html"}],"article_sources":false,"vf_locked":false,"featured":false,"color":"#007B53"},"embl_taxonomy_terms":[],"yoast_head":"\n