Fly

• Fruit flies can be truly annoying when they are buzzing around your living room or landing in your wine.
• But we have much to thank these tiny nuisances for – they revolutionised biological and medical science.
• Flies and mosquitoes both belong to Diptera, the group of insects that have only two wings (from the Greek di meaning two and pteron meaning wing).
• I will argue from a different angle, though, to win your respect for one specific dipteran: the fruit or vinegar fly (Drosophila melanogaster).

Helping science take off

• This is because it’s easier to see evolutionary changes in large populations of a species with high turnover.
• His mass-breeding experiments with hundreds of thousands of flies led to the discovery of a single fly with white eyes, instead of the red eyes fruit flies normally have.
• The plethora of genetic strategies we’ve learned about in flies has turned into a powerful means to dissect mechanisms of fly development.
• In 1995, three scientists won the Nobel prize for their contribution to this new understanding.

A startling likeness

• Many human genes can even take over the function of their Drosophilia equivalent when inserted into the fly genome.
• Because we are so alike genetically, many aspects of human biology and disease have been explored first in Drosophila.
• Today, over 10,000 researchers worldwide are estimated to work with Drosophila in many areas of science that relate to human biology and disease.
• Fruit flies hovering in your kitchen might be aggravating, but hopefully you will see them in a different light now.