MARCM information

Mosaic analysis with a repressible cell marker, or MARCM, is a genetics technique for creating individually labeled homozygous cells in an otherwise heterozygous Drosophila melanogaster.^[1] It has been a crucial tool in studying the development of the Drosophila nervous system. This technique relies on recombination during mitosis mediated by FLP-FRT recombination. As one copy of a gene, provided by the balancer chromosome, is often enough to rescue a mutant phenotype, MARCM clones can be used to study a mutant phenotype in an otherwise wildtype animal.