Injection of Adult Drosophila Flies: A Method of Compound or Label Delivery

Abstract

Source: Nazario-Toole, A. E., Wu, L. P. Assessing the Cellular Immune Response of the Fruit Fly, Drosophila melanogaster, Using an In Vivo Phagocytosis Assay. J. Vis. Exp. (2019).

This video describes how to perform an injection of live adult flies and includes an example protocol in which labeled particles and trypan blue are injected in fly abdomens to assay phagocytosis.

Protocol

This protocol is an excerpt from Nazario-Toole and Wu, Assessing the Cellular Immune Response of the Fruit Fly, Drosophila melanogaster, Using an In Vivo Phagocytosis Assay, J. Vis. Exp. (2019). 1. Prepare Fluorescein particles for injection Reconstitute 10 mg of commercially available, heat-killed bacteria particles labeled with fluorescein (see Table of Materials) to a stock concentration of 10 mg/mL by adding 990 µL ster…

Materials

5430-10 PicoNozzle Kit	World Precision Instruments	5430-10	Holder for 1.0mm pipette
E. coli (K-12 Strain) BioParticles, Fluorescein conjugate	Invitrogen	E2861	Killed E. coli labeled with FITC (Fluorescein). Use to test phagocyte recogntion and uptake of gram-negative bacteria. (~494/~518 nm)
Needle Pipette Puller	David Kopf Instruments	Model 725
Pneumatic PicoPump PV820	World Precision Instruments	SYS-PV820	The World Precision Instruments Pneumatic PicoPump PV820 uses differential pressures to hold liquid in the glass needle between injections. The user manually controls short bursts of gas pressure to expel the liquid – allowing delivery of sub-nanoliter volumes. The amount of liquid delivered depends on two main variables – the size of the glass needle opening and the amount of time injection pressure is applied. set the instrument to 100 ms "TIMED" mode.
Thin Wall Glass Capillaries	World Precision Instruments	TW100F-3	Needles for injection. OD = 1.0 mm
Trypan Blue Solution (0.4%)	Sigma	T8154	Used to quench extracellular fluorescence of Fluorescein, Alexa Fluor, or Texas Red labeled particles.