Abstract
Drosophila melanogaster has a long history as a model organism with several unique features that make it an ideal research tool for the study of the relationship between genotype and phenotype. Importantly fundamental genetic principles as well as key human disease genes have been uncovered through the use of Drosophila. The contribution of the fruit fly to science and medicine continues in the postgenomic era as cell-based Drosophila RNAi screens are a cost-effective and scalable enabling technology that can be used to quantify the contribution of different genes to diverse cellular processes. Drosophila high-throughput screens can also be used as integral part of systems-level approaches to describe the architecture and dynamics of cellular networks.