Students in this course will be exposed to the process of scientific investigation through collaboration with researchers at Stanford University. The overarching goal of Dr. Kim's lab at Stanford is to explore the function and development of insulin-producing cells in humans with the ultimate goal of curing type I and type II diabetes. The fruit fly is used as a model system because it has insulin-producing cells and many of the regulatory pathways are the same as in humans. A critical part of this work, as in all experiments involving fruit flies, is to be able to control gene expression as specifically as possible. Students will be involved in finding regions of DNA that control gene expression in fruit flies. To do this they will learn current techniques in fly biology, florescence microscopy, molecular biology and bioinformatics. Useful strains of flies made and characterized by students will be used by researchers in Dr. Kim's lab and made available to all scientists working on fruit flies.