Cahir J. O'Kane is a geneticist whose work includes developing enhancer trap experiments in Drosophila melanogaster. His institutional account places that work during his postdoctoral period with Walter Jakob Gehring in Basel. The original 1987 paper's first-page byline gives Cahir J. O'Kane and Walter J. Gehring.[ref]
Professor Cahir O'Kane profile by Churchill College. biography, Basel postdoctoral work and enhancer trapping
[ref]Detection in situ of genomic regulatory elements in Drosophila by C. J. O'Kane and W. J. Gehring. PNAS 84, page 9123, original byline
The experiment used a P element to place a weak-promoter reporter gene in different genomic contexts. Beta-galactosidase activity provided a visible readout of reporter expression. About seventy percent of forty-nine transformed lines showed spatially regulated expression in embryos, demonstrating the method's ability to recover distinct regulatory patterns.[ref]
Detection in situ of genomic regulatory elements in Drosophila by C. J. O'Kane and W. J. Gehring. Abstract and Results, promoter/reporter design and transformed-line observations
A pattern is a starting point for a biological question. For example, a hypothetical reporter restricted to one tissue identifies a useful expression domain, but does not alone establish the full normal expression of a nearby gene or prove that only one enhancer caused the pattern. Additional mapping and comparisons address those questions.
O'Kane's Cambridge research profile also describes work on the organization of axonal endoplasmic reticulum in Drosophila neurons. It connects the geometry and continuity of this membrane network with cellular function.[ref]
Cahir O'Kane research profile by the Department of Genetics at Cambridge. first-person biography and Research Interests, axonal ER organization
Both research themes use an experimentally tractable model organism to turn a difficult cellular or regulatory property into an observable phenotype. New to topics? Read the docs here!