Whitington Lab ~ Life in the Lab

Fly City - each tube houses several hundred flies of a particular genotype. The incubator keeps them at their favourite temperature of 25 degrees C.

Der stolze Vater- Martin with his favourite mutants. Within each vial, the flies live out their lives - mating and producing new larvae, which feed on the medium at the bottom of the vial as they develop into new adult flies.

Ronny happily checking out some stained embryos. We let the flies lay eggs on agar plates, then collect the embryos and fix and stain them. The staining reaction is followed under the stereomicroscope, as the embryos are barely a millimeter long.

Henrik and Ronny imaging some stained embryos with the compound microscope. Almost all our imaging is done with a 100X oil immersion objective, due to the small size of the neurons and their axons.