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Using the Q system in Drosophila melanogaster

Nature Protocols volume 6, pages 1105–1120 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

In Drosophila, the GAL4/UAS/GAL80 repressible binary expression system is widely used to manipulate or mark tissues of interest. However, complex biological systems often require distinct transgenic manipulations of different cell populations. For this purpose, we recently developed the Q system, a second repressible binary expression system. We describe here the basic steps for performing a variety of Q system experiments in vivo. These include how to generate and use Q system reagents to express effector transgenes in tissues of interest, how to use the Q system in conjunction with the GAL4 system to generate intersectional expression patterns that precisely limit which tissues will be experimentally manipulated and how to use the Q system to perform mosaic analysis. The protocol described here can be adapted to a wide range of experimental designs.

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Figure 1: Schematic and example of Q system components in Drosophila.
Figure 2: Flowchart of example GAL4 and Q system applications.
Figure 3: Crossing scheme for tissue-specific QS suppression of QF.
Figure 4: Crossing scheme for ubiquitous QS-mediated suppression of QF coupled with quinic acid treatment.
Figure 5: Using the Q system with the GAL4 system for generating intersectional expression patterns.
Figure 6: Crossing scheme for GAL4 NOT QF intersectional experiments.
Figure 7: Crossing scheme for QF NOT GAL4 intersectional experiments.
Figure 8: Crossing scheme for QF AND GAL4 intersectional experiments.
Figure 9: Schematic and example of Q-based mosaic analysis with a repressible cell marker (Q-MARCM).
Figure 10: Schematic and example of coupled MARCM.
Figure 11: Example intersectional expression experiments between GAL4 and QF olfactory projection neuron lines.

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Acknowledgements

We thank E. Russler for the image in Figure 11e, and C.-C. Lin and S. Chin for critical reading of the manuscript. C.J.P. is supported by a startup fund from The Center for Sensory Biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. L.L. is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    Christopher J Potter

  2. Department of Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Liqun Luo

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  1. Christopher J Potter
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Contributions

C.J.P. designed and performed the experiments and generated the figures and tables; C.J.P. and L.L. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher J Potter.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Table 1

Available Q system DNA constructs. (DOCX 117 kb)

Supplementary Table 2

Available Q system transgenic fly stocks. (DOCX 130 kb)

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Potter, C., Luo, L. Using the Q system in Drosophila melanogaster. Nat Protoc 6, 1105–1120 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nprot.2011.347

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