“Fruit fly, little fruit fly, they say we share the same pair of genes. But I‘ve got a complex one or two more than you, you’ve got the ones that give you the wings....”

From Fruit Fly

Tom Bianchi

Park Street Blues

The work in my lab is centered around using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model for understanding neural development, synaptic function, and human neurological disease.  Currently we are focused on the role palmitoylation plays in normal nervous system function.   Palmitoylation, the post-translational addition of a palmitate lipid to a protein, is an important mechanism for modulating trafficking, protein localization, vesicle fusion, and signal transduction.   We are also focused on understanding how disruption of normal palmitoylation pathways can lead to infantile onset Batten Disease (Infantile Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis), a pediatric neurodegenerative disease. 

The fruit fly has been a staple of biological research for the past 100 years because of its short generation time, relatively inexpensive maintenance costs, accessible cell biology, and the sophisticated yet simple genetic tools available to researchers.  These attributes also make it a perfect organism to use in developing a biomedical research program involving undergraduates.  Both my current research as well as future projects are amenable to undergraduate research and will expose students to numerous fields including: molecular biology, neurobiology, genetics and cell biology.  Furthermore, my work also provides an introduction to human genetics and disease and the use of model systems as a way to understand disease mechanisms.

The lab is currently funded by grants from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development (NIH-NICHD Grant# HD052362), the NIH South Carolina INBRE Program (Grant# RR16461) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  In the past we have been supported by the SOMAS program (NSF DUE# 0426266), the Batten Disease Support and Research Association (BDSRA), the NIH South Carolina-BRIN program, the Department of Biology, and the College of Charlestons’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Program