Project Description: Next-generation sequencing has greatly accelerated the discovery of human disease-related genetic variants. However, understanding how these variants contribute to the disease is challenging and requires functional studies. Around 65% of human disease-causing genes have counterparts the fruit fly, Drosophila. Drosophila provides a powerful, rapid and cost-effective model for testing the function of gene […]

Previous studies revealed that the NFXL1 gene is associated with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in human populations. NFXL1 is highly expressed in the cerebellum of the brain and is predicted to encode a transcription factor. Although there is an association of NFXL1 with language acquisition in humans, it is conserved across evolution to fruit flies […]