Flying through the Drosophila Cytoskeletal Genome

The well-developed genetics of Drosophila make it an excellent system to understand mechanisms of cytoskeletal function and organization and how the cytoskeleton is coupled to development and differentiation. Many years of work have revealed that Drosophila has a set of cytoskeletal structural proteins and protein motors qualitatively similar to most other eukaryotes. The full toolbox of cytoskeletal elements, and the extent to which they resemble cytoskeletal proteins in other organisms has, however, remained unknown owing to the lack of a complete genome sequence. With the recent arrival of the complete sequence of the euchromatic genome of Drosophila (Adams et al. 2000; Rubin et al. 2000), we can begin to compile a complete list of cytoskeletal components. We can also answer once and for all the question of what cytoskeletal proteins discovered in mammals and other eukaryotes...