Peptidomics and processing of regulatory peptides in the fruit fly Drosophila

• Review of the peptidomic studies carried out in Drosophila so far.
• Review of the current knowledge on prepropeptide processing in Drosophila.
• Full list of neuropeptides/peptide hormones chemically identified in Drosophila.

More than a decade has passed since the release of the Drosophila melanogaster genome and the first predictions of fruit fly regulatory peptides (neuropeptides and peptide hormones). Since then, mass spectrometry-based methods have fuelled the chemical characterisation of regulatory peptides, from 7 Drosophila peptides in the pre-genomic area to more than 60 today. We review the development of fruit fly peptidomics, and present a comprehensive list of the regulatory peptides that have been chemically characterised until today. We also summarise the knowledge on peptide processing in Drosophila, which has strongly profited from a combination of MS-based techniques and the genetic tools available for the fruit fly. This combination has a very high potential to study the functional biology of peptide signalling on all levels, especially with the ongoing developments in quantitative MS in Drosophila.

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