Used for the maintenance of Drosophila melanogaster and other insects.|K12® Medium is a new insect food particularly indicated for Drosophila melanogaster flies growth and propagation. Fruit flies are maintained as live culture by transferring adults to fresh medium every few generations. Therefore, good quality food yielding high numbers of healthy flies is critical for stock maintenance. Our medium has many advantages over existing rich traditional media (containing molasses or corn)| |K12® Medium yields about 200% more larvae and adult flies (Fig.1). This is particularly relevant for the propagation of precious mutant Drosophila strains, which are less viable, used, for example, as models for studying human genetic diseases; | |K12® Medium increases the levels of egg deposition (18-20 hours) of about 50% (Fig.2) | |K12® Medium greatly improves (about 100%) the overall hatching rate (18-20 hours) (flies raised on K12 Medium hatch over a 4-5 day period instead of the 2-3 days of traditional media), greatly facilitating the collection of virgins and the use of young adults for healthy crosses (Fig.3); | |K12® Medium is resistant to microbial contamination and to liquification. This latter feature is |particularly relevant for successful maintenance of sick stocks, quick expansion of stocks |and for mass culture of larvae and adults; | |K12® Medium is on average 60% cheaper than other rich traditional media (see Table 1); | |K12® Medium is very easy to prepare, store and handle. It comes as a premixed powder to be |reconstituted in water. | |Source of K12® Medium: |After nutritional and developmental studies conducted in several wild type and mutant stocks of D. melanogaster, we developed a medium containing the same nutritional sources found in commonly used fly food plus K12, an additional natural ingredient that improves fly development by increasing the number of healthy hatching adults per cross. K12 is extracted from natural sources, currently used in human and animal food industry, and is neither toxic nor cancerous.||Appearance: |Brown, homogeneous, free flowing powder