Kayly Lembke
Kayly has a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine.
Articles by Kayly Lembke
Generally speaking, fruit flies are a great model system. Not only are they small, thus taking up very little space in the lab, but their adult lifespan is only 40-60 days, so you can track age-dependent changes without having to wait months and months. Fruit flies also display complex behaviors and more than 75% of…
Drosophila melanogaster, otherwise known as the common fruit fly, is one of the oldest and most powerful model systems used in biology. Fruit flies are cheap to maintain, and have a shorter life cycle and higher fecundity than mammalian models. They also have extraordinary genetic tools with which to investigate many molecular and cellular questions.…
Isolating RNA from either Drosophila larvae or adult heads can seem a bit daunting, primarily due to the presence of the cuticle. The cuticle is a protective exoskeleton comprised of insoluble collagens, cuticlins, glycoproteins, and lipids. While it may take some force to remove the cuticle, you can do this easily and without compromising your…
Picture it: 6:00 pm on a Friday night. You have one or more experiments running. Maybe you’re doing a western blot, or following a staining protocol for an immunohistochemistry experiment, or just labeling tubes. But rather than working on active experiments, you’re helplessly searching through the lab drawer for that one pair of forceps, that…
Every lab has a culture, a vibe of its own. Nowhere does the distinct character of the lab become most apparent than the way in which the lab chooses to pour agar plates. You may have heard or been told to pour plates at some point in your lab career. These “plates” could be called…
If you want to know what is going on in the brain of drosophila you can use neurobiology imaging techniques to get a global whole-brain perspective. However, such techniques are slow compared to the rapid nature of the neuronal electrical activity, which may be better studied using Drosophila electrophysiology. Lab techniques are often shrouded in…