From owner-drosophila@net.bio.net Tue Sep 12 23:00:00 1995 Path: biosci!SUN.CIS.SMU.EDU!rjones From: rjones@SUN.CIS.SMU.EDU ("Richard S. Jones") Newsgroups: bionet.drosophila Subject: Sick flies need your help Date: 13 Sep 1995 15:56:19 -0700 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 35 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Distribution: world Message-ID: Reply-To: "Richard S. Jones" NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net HELP!!! Our fly facility is struggling with an infectious fly disease (NOT MITES). The symptoms include significant embryonic, larval, and pupal lethality in stocks that carry no recessive lethal mutations. Also, 10 to 50% of affected adults often die within one week following eclosion. Some stocks are more susceptible to these symptoms than others. For example, our Oregon-R stock seems completely unaffected. We can "cure" a stock by bleach-dechorionating embryos, placing them in fresh vials, and re-establishing the stock from the resulting adults. However, if this stock is subsequently handled with utensils (brushes, CO2 plate, etc.) that are used with infected flies, the symptoms return. Since our facility has several hundred stocks (we don't know if all are infected, but don't want to take chances), the dechorionation method is an impractical permanent cure. Our normal food contains methyl paraben. Supplementing it with acid mixes, or tetracycline and/or chloramphenicol does not help. If anyone has had experience with such a problem, and especially if you can recommend an antibiotic based treatment (or other food additive type of treatment, since we don't really know if we are dealing with bacteria or???), we would greatly appreciate your advice. We and our flies thank you in advance. Rick Jones rjones@sun.cis.smu.edu Dept. of Biological Sciences Fondren Science Building Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275 TEL: 214-768-3810 FAX: 214-768-3955 .