Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center at Indiana University

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Project Summary The Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (BDSC) collects, curates, maintains and distributes strains of the fly Drosophila melanogaster to support the biomedical research community. It is the largest and most comprehensive Drosophila stock collection in the world, and it is central to the success of many research projects—including over 820 active NIH grants. The COVID pandemic has caused several aspects of BDSC operations to suffer, and the funding requested here will serve to repair damage and restore normal productivity in the areas of information system management, quality control and research by engaging the temporary services of available professionals within Indiana University. First, contracted computer programming services will restore appropriate progress to an ongoing project transitioning BDSC information management to a web-based platform. Unfortunately, this project was slowed irreparably by diverting effort of BDSC scientists to disaster management. These services will help push the project to completion before legacy software critical to all BDSC functions is no longer usable. Second, short-term employees will allow the BDSC to redeploy the effort of experienced stockkeeping staff to catch up on the surveillance of stocks for cross-contamination or genetic breakdown that was suspended when COVID restrictions mandated only essential work on campus. Identifying problematic stocks is critical to assuring that the samples investigators receive are trustworthy. Finally, an experienced technician will devote effort to a resource-development project generating strains needed for investigating intestinal epithelial cell functions. The parent grant supports the identification and characterization of GAL4 and split-GAL4 drivers that allow targeted expression of UAS transgenes in specific midgut cells, but the pandemic prevented the expected rate of progress. Specifically, it delayed the introduction of new, more-effective drivers to scientists investigating the development and functions of enteroendocrine cells, a model peptide hormone-secreting cell type with human cognates. Altogether, these interventions will repair COVID-inflicted operational deficiencies and allow the BDSC to provide services to biomedical researchers at the high level of quality that existed before the pandemic.