The goal of Dr. Gorski’s lab in carrying out this research is to increase our understanding of the regulation and functions of autophagy as part of the normal development processes in an easily studied model organism. To achieve this goal, they are using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, which has evolutionarily conserved autophagy-related (Atg) genes and pathways. They have developed reporter tools to help study autophagy in fly cell lines and in various fly tissues in vivo. They are now combining these tools with the powerful genetic analyses possible in this model system, to identify and characterize new regulators and effectors of Atg genes and the autophagy pathway.