fruit fly

Researchers have discovered a central molecular switch in fruit fly embryos that opens new avenues for studying the causes of birth defects and cancer in humans.

Scientists have determined the switch to be a main tuning mechanism for instructing cells whether to form sensory nerves or blood cells in different parts of the body.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have shown how Argos, a fruit fly protein, acts as a "decoy" receptor, binding growth factors that promote the progression of cancer.

Knowing how Argos neutralizes tumor growth may lead to new drug designs for inhibiting cancer.

When a young gene known as sphinx is inactivated in the common fruit fly, it leads to increased male-male courtship.

Such behavior is widespread in many fly species, but not in Drosophila melanogaster, which has the sphinx gene.

Other fly species do not. When two D. melanogaster males that lack the sphinx gene are put together, they court each other.

Biologists have determined that faulty RNA, the blueprint that creates mutated, toxic proteins, contributes to a family of neurodegenerative disorders in humans.

The study demonstrates that faulty RNA also assists in the onset and progression of disease in fruit fly models.

At first, fruit flies eat like horses. Hatching inside over-ripe fruit where they were laid, they feed wildly in the sugar-rich environment until nature sends them an offer they can't refuse.

To survive, they must leave the fruit, wander off and burrow into the earth where they avoid food as if it were poison.

Only then can the larvae grow and hatch into flies that will take wing to lay their own eggs.

(University of Georgia) A team of researchers from the University of Georgia has discovered for the first time that the important developmental switch from food attraction to aversion in the fruit fly larva is controlled by a timing mechanism in the brain and its sensory system.

The study shows how this important avoidance mechanism has been recruited into evolutionary processes to promote development and could lead to new methods of controlling pain in humans and other animals.

By monitoring gene activity levels and changes in chromatin -- the protein spools that the genes wrap around -- researchers were able to detect epigenetic factors that make fruit fly cells resistant to radiation.

The discovery suggests that tumor cells may have similar protection from radiotherapy or chemotherapy, an insight that may lead to more effective cancer treatments.

Biologists have mapped the medulla circuitry in fruit flies, setting the stage for subsequent research on how color vision is processed.

The work will enable researchers to explore how color vision is processed in the optic lobe of the fruit fly Drosophila, providing a paradigm for more complex systems in vertebrates.

A team of UIC neuroscientists has developed a technique for extracting useful quantities of insect blood from a single fruit fly.

The technique may prove useful in genetic studies and for studying minute amounts of fluid from disease hot-spots, such as those where some retinal diseases begin.

A University of Missouri researcher has found, through the study of Drosophila (a type of fruit fly), that by manipulating levels of certain compounds associated with the "circuitry" of the brain, key genes related to memory can be isolated and tested.

The results of the study may benefit human patients suffering from Parkinson's disease and could eventually lead to discoveries in the treatment of depression.