RNA Extraction From Drosophila Heads

Abstract

In Drosophila, the concentration and phosphorylation levels of several important cir- cadian proteins (e.g., PERIOD, TIMELESS) oscillate on a 24-h basis. A simple and rapid method for extracting proteins from fly heads is presented here. The extracts can immediately be loaded onto an sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophore- sis gel to assay the effects of mutations, genetic manipulations, or environmental condi- tions on the oscillations of circadian proteins by Western blotting. They can also be used for immunoprecipitation experiments.