Michael Ashburner

This exceptional laboratory manual describes thirty-seven procedures most likely to be used in the next decade for molecular, biochemical, and cellular studies on Drosophila. They were selected after extensive consultation with the research community and rigorously edited for clarity, uniformity, and conciseness. The outstanding features of this protocol collection are: Scope: The methods included permit investigation of chromosomes, cell biology, molecular biology, genomes, biochemistry, and development.Depth: Each protocol includes the basic information needed by novices, with sufficient detail to be valuable to experienced investigators.Format: Each method is carefully introduced and illustrated with figures, tables, illustrations, and examples of the data obtainable.Added value: The book's appendices include key aspects of Drosophila biology, essential solutions, buffers, and recipes. An evolution of Michael Ashburner's 1989 classic Drosophila: A Laboratory Manual, this book is an essential addition to the personal library of Drosophila investigators and an incomparable resource for other research groups with goals likely to require fly-based technical approaches.

This is the story of the sequencing of the fly genome as told by one of the participants, Michael Ashburner. Written in a diarylike form, half the story is told in numerous footnotes. Ashburner has written a delightful, candid, irreverent, onthescene tale filled with eccentric personalities all focused on a single goal. The book also contains an Epilogue that puts Drosophila as a model system in historical context, and an Afterword that discusses the impact the genome sequence has had on the study of Drosophila. Also included are portraits by Lewis Miller of some of the principal characters. About the author: Michael Ashburner is Professor of Biology in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. By training and inclination, he is a Drosophila geneticist, although for more than a decade, he has not been where he belongsthe lab benchbut in front of computer screens. He spent six years at the European Bioinformatics Institute, first as the Institute's Research Programme Coordinator, and then as its JointHead. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.