Guidelines for anti-obesity assays in Drosophila melanogaster model

Abstract

Accumulating evidence showed that obesity leads to severe and various diseases chronically. Although the long list of mechanisms that obesity can harm us is still elongating, more rapid animal models are desired to investigate and illustrate obesity and help us to screen potential treatments. Drosophila melanogaster compared to other commonly used model for in vivo investigations shares many homologous genes and has been used for anti-obesity research. In this guideline, we summarized the most commonly used assays containing behavioral assays, quantification of body fat, and quantification of glucose, transcriptional activation of genes assays and discussed the future work for anti-obesity research with D. melanogaster to introduce it as a potential model organism for short-term anti-obesity treatment investigations.