Abstract
Transgenic manipulation of target neurons is increasingly important for understanding how brain circuits control complex behaviors. In Drosophila, the GAL4–upstream activating sequence (UAS) binary system is widely used to manipulate functions of gene expression and neuronal activity. Though thousands of GAL4 lines are available, their expression patterns are usually not specific enough to manipulate target neurons. The FLP-induced intersectional GAL80/GAL4 repression (FINGR) system consisting of tissue-specific enhancer-trap Flippase lines and a FRT-dependent GAL80 “flip-out” construct has recently been developed to narrow down the GAL4 expressed pattern. Nevertheless, application of FINGR system faces two obstacles: First, the numbers of expression patterns of enhancer-trap Flippase lines are limited. Second, there are no easy ways to analyze GAL4/FLP intersection. Here, I comprehensively examined nearly 1000 FLP expression patterns and cataloged these results into a driver database, called FlyDriver. The FlyDriver allows users to predict GAL4/FLP intersection. As a proof of concept, I have established a standard operation procedure for predicting GAL4/FLP intersection before generating the genetic flies through combining several transgenes into the same fly. My study will help neuroscientists to generate circuit controlling tool for understanding how the brain orchestrates complex behavior in Drosophila.