Dr. Michael A. Welte
Professor

Department of Biology
University of Rochester
Hutchison 317
michael.welte@rochester.edu

Papers

A reproducible thermotolerance assay for embryos


Drosophila embryos of defined ages are placed on filter paper and exposedPre-Treated Embryos Survive Elevated Temperatures to elevated temperatures.  If embryos are severely damaged, they die, fail to hatch, and turn brown over time.  Surviving embryos hatch into larvae which crawl away, but leave their empty egg shells behind.  In this experiment, the embryos on the left were held at room temperature while the embryos on the right were pretreated at 36°C for 30 minutes to induce heat-shock proteins.  Then both sets of embryos were exposed to a severe heat challenge.  On the left, all embryos died; on the right, the pretreatment induced thermotolerance and most embryos survived.

This filter assay is easy to perform, can be used for all embryonic stages, and allows large number of embryos to be tested.  For example, for the graph shown below, a total of 14,527 eggs were counted.




 Thermo-Tolerance Assay Graph


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