VT (Vienna Tile) GAL4 driver lines
GAL4 lines are one part of the binary GAL4-UAS system (Brand and Perrimon, 1993, Development). GAL4 'drivers' are typically used to restrict the expression of a UAS line (eg. UAS-RNAi) to a specific subset of cells or developmental time-point.
The VT library consists of transgenic Drosophila lines containing short fragments of genomic DNA controlling GAL4 expression, generated and validated by the Dickson and Stark groups at the IMP, Vienna. The constructs are integrated at a single defined genomic position (attP2) and each carries a distinct candidate cis-regulatory DNA fragment, typically ~2kb in size. These lines have been constructed according to the methods developed by the Rubin group at Janelia Farm Research Campus (Pfeiffer et al, 2008, PNAS 105:917) and form a complementary resource to the Janelia collection (Jenett et al, 2012, Cell Reports).
The precise expression patterns of reporters driven by these lines have been extensively documented and annotated, both in the Drosophila adult brain (Dickson group, Tirian and Dickson, 2017) and spatio-temporally in embryos (Stark group, Kvon et al, Nature, 2014).
Expression data
Data from these analyses are stored in the following databases and are invaluable for helping you search for lines of interest and are directly linked to the VDRC stock ID for ease of ordering.
Adult brain - http://www.virtualflybrain.org/
Confocal images of male brains from VT lines along with curation of where they are expressed can be accessed at Virtual Fly Brain (Milyaev et al., 2012). Images were created by Dickson group, IMP, Vienna (now at HHMI Janelia Research Campus). Many of the VT GAL4 lines have also been independently imaged in female brains and ventral nerve cords at HHMI Janelia Research Campus (www.janelia.org/gal4-gen1).
Embryos - http://enhancers.starklab.org
This site enables manual inspection of the raw microscopy slides at arbitrary zoom levels and allows simple and complex searches by:
- IDs (VT tile number)
- neighboring genes (e.g. FBgn, synonyms)
- genomic coordinates
- annotation terms including:
- embryonic developmental stage
- strength of enhancer activity
- fixed anatomical terms
- keywords
We are encouraging all users to order GAL4 lines for their favorite cell type, tissue, expression pattern or gene. We are happy to answer any questions and to discuss flexible delivery options for large scale orders and are particularly supportive of putative efforts to characterize the lines in additional contexts (e.g. imaginal discs or ovaries). Please contact us office@vdrc.at.