Featured below is a fluorescence digital image captured with a confocal laser scanning microscope of a triple-labeled Drosophila eye imaginal disc recovered from the third instar larval developmental stage. This image is a higher magnification view of a previous image in the gallery.

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Fruit Fly Imaginal Disc: Third Instar Eye Specimen: Drosophila Imaginal Disc Technique: Fluorescence (Triple Label)

Drosophila was the model organism most widely utilized in genetics experiments prior to the development of advanced fungal genetic techniques in the 1930s. Both models took a backseat to bacteriophage in the 1950s and 1960s when a majority of scientists turned to the field of molecular biology and began to examine genetic concepts on a molecular level. Recombinant DNA technology, which developed into a useful tool in the 1970s and took the field by storm, provided a convenient method to isolate and examine the complex genetic structure of eukaryotes, thus reawakening the scientific community to the lowly fruit fly. Today, because so much is known about Drosophila than any other higher organism, it has become the E. coli of eukaryotic genetics.