Wound healing is an essential physiological process that repairs damaged tissues through a collaboration of molecular and cellular events. For a wound to heal properly, hemostasis (blood clotting), inflammatory, proliferative, and maturation phases must occur sequentially at specific times and at optimal levels. I’ve been using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism to study wound healing and the potential role of a family of six growth factors called Imaginal Disc Growth Factors (IDGFs). IDGFs are related to human chitinase-like proteins, which are upregulated in cancer and other diseases associated with inflammation; their function, however, is not yet understood. We hope to gain some insight by studying their role in wound healing in the Drosophila wing imaginal disc, a larval tissue that will become the adult wing. Using a method called in situ hybridization, which reveals the patterns of RNA localization in fixed tissue, I found that while IDGFs are normally expressed in wing imaginal discs, their expression is immediately turned off upon wounding. However, using transgenic fly strains that have IDGF2 and IDGF6 proteins tagged with a green fluorescent protein and an extended culture assay that allowed me to track protein expression over time, I found that IDGFs are upregulated at the wound sites after several hours. Combining these observations, I hypothesize that IDGFs are first turned off in the hemostasis phase and later are upregulated in the inflammatory or proliferative phase, when new tissue begins to form. To determine the cell types, cellular dynamics, and precise timing of IDGF upregulation, I will use confocal live imaging and label cell types that are known to be involved in wound healing, such as hemocytes. These studies will contribute to our understanding of the genes that regulate tissue healing after mechanical injury.