Modeling Tauopathy in the Fruit Fly Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has emerged as a powerful system in which to model human disease. This review focuses on the utility of the fly to model tau-dependent neurodegeneration, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and related neurodegenerative disorders. I provide a detailed description of fly tauopathy models and summarize a number of studies that demonstrate their ability to recapitulate both primary features of tauopathy, including tau-induced neurodegeneration and phosphorylation, and secondary features, including oxidative stress, cell-cycle activation and changes in the actin cytoskeleton. Important genetic and biochemical insights are discussed, and future directions proposed.