The Drosophila JAK-STAT pathway.

The conservation of signaling cascades between humans and Drosophila, over more than 500 million years of evolutionary time, means that the genetic tractability of the fly can be used to its full advantage to understand the functional requirements for JAK-STAT pathway signaling across species. Here we review the background to how the pathway was first identified and the first characterization of JAK-STAT pathway phenotypes in the Drosophila system, highlighting the molecular, functional, and disease-related conservation of the pathway.