The difficulty in accessing mammalian nephrons in vivo hinders the study of podocyte
biology. The Drosophila nephrocyte shares remarkable similarities to the glomerular
podocyte, but the lack of a functional readout for nephrocytes makes it challenging to study
this model of the podocyte, which could potentially harness the power of Drosophila
genetics. Here, we present a functional analysis of nephrocytes and establish an in vivo
system to screen for renal genes. We found that nephrocytes efficiently take up secreted …