FlyBase
Much of what we know about how human genes work comes not from studying human genes, actually, but from studying the genes of Drosophila, or fruit flies.
It's been nearly 100 years since scientists began parsing genetics' elegant details with the help of those winged kitchen pests. The amount of information scientists have generated from their studies of Drosophila is formidable.
Enter FlyBase, the world's most comprehensive, complete, and user-friendly database of Drosophila genetic information. FlyBase is based at Indiana University Bloomington and is run by IUB biologists Thomas Kaufman and Kathy Matthews. The project is supported, in part, by a five-year, $20 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Collaborating institutions are the University of California at Berkeley, Cambridge University, and Harvard University.
FlyBase is in Bloomington because IU employs the world's most impressive corps of fruit fly biologists — and also because IU is a leader in informatics and bioinformatics. The organization of genetic information requires not only knowledge of biology, but knowledge of how best to make biological data usable and useful to the thousands of scientists worldwide who rely daily on FlyBase's vast store of information.
For more information, visit: http://flybase.bio.indiana.edu/
