The Stein Lab uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model to study the mechanisms regulating embryonic and ovarian development, and to investigate the genetic networks that control growth and proliferation. The Drosophila system enables them to utilize sophisticated genetic techniques that cannot be used in studies of human beings or other vertebrate model organisms. Insights derived from studies of particular proteins in model animal systems such as Drosophila can often be extended to processes occurring in human beings that involve the same or similar proteins.