Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism to study nanotoxicity

Abstract

Drosophila melanogaster has been used as an in vivo model organism for the study of genetics and development since 100 years ago. Recently, the fruit fly Drosophila was also developed as an in vivo model organism for toxicology studies, in particular, the field of nanotoxicity. The incorporation of nanomaterials into consumer and biomedical products is a cause for concern as nanomaterials are often associated with toxicity in many in vitro studies. In vivo animal studies of the toxicity of nanomaterials with rodents and other mammals are, however, limited due to high operational cost and ethical objections. Hence, Drosophila, a genetically tractable organism with distinct developmental stages and short life cycle, serves as an ideal organism to study nanomaterial-mediated toxicity. This review discusses the basic biology of Drosophila, the toxicity of nanomaterials, as well as how the Drosophila model can be used to study the toxicity of various types of nanomaterials.

• Drosophila melanogaster
• in vivo model organism
• nanomaterials
• toxicity

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ms Song-Lin Bay for her assistance in preparing the artwork for the figures used in this article and Ms You Fang from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, for synthesizing the AgNPs used in this study.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

This research was funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF), Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore, under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme and the NUS start-up grant R-181-000-142-133.