Hello all,

I have a rather trivial question: what is the best way for imaging whole Drosophila larvae? I need to image control and mutant larvae to show differences in larval size.

The best I have come up with, is flash-freezing on grape juice plates, letting them thaw, transferring them to a moist slide, arranging them, wicking up the PBS so it doesn't glare, and taking a photo. While this sounds simple, the flash-freezing causes them to shrivel up, making differences in size difficult to show; and arranging them on a slide and keeping them moist so they don't stick to the slide, but also dry enough that different larvae don't all coalesce into the same puddle of PBS, is very time-consuming.

I feel there has got to be a simpler way that I am simply not thinking of, but this is one of those things that nobody describes in the methods sections of their papers, so there isn't much I can do but make protocols up until something works. But I figured I'd ask RG first.

Thanks for the help