fly in Biological News

E-Noses: Testing their mettle against fly noses

Scientists from CSIRO's Food Futures Flagship have made a breakthrough in efforts to extend the sensory range of 'electronic noses' (e-noses) by developing a system for comparing their performance against the much-superior nose of the common house fly. "Although e-noses already have many uses s...

Fate in fly sensory organ precursor cells could explain human immune disorder

HOUSTON (June 21, 2009) Notch signaling helps determine the fate of a number of different cell types in a variety of organisms, including humans. In an article that appears in the current issue of Nature Cell Biology , researchers at Baylor College of Medicine report that a new finding about th...

Sugarcoating fruit fly development

Proteins are the executive agents that carry out all processes in a cell. Their activity is controlled and modified with the help of small chemical tags that can be dynamically added to and removed from the protein. 25 years after its first discovery, researchers at the European Molecular Biology ...

P[acman]-generated fruit fly gene 'library': A new research tool

HOUSTON -- (May 24, 2009) -- Using a specially adapted tool called P[acman], a collaboration of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine has established a library of clones that cover most of the genome of Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) and should speed the pace of genetic research. ...

New phorid fly species turns red imported fire ants into 'zombies'

OVERTON Zombie fire ants may not sound like a cool thing, but wait a minute, said a Texas AgriLife Extension Service expert. On April 29, on the grounds of the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Overton in East Texas, Dr. Scott Ludwig released fire ants infected with a new type of...

How nonstick bugs evade natural fly paper

There are few things more irritating than a fly buzzing around the house. South Africans have an unconventional solution to the problem. They hang up a bunch of Roridula gorgonias leaves. Attracted to the shiny adhesive droplets on the leaf's hairs, the hapless pest is soon trapped by the natura...

How non-stick bugs evade natural fly paper

There are few things more irritating than a fly buzzing around the house. South Africans have an unconventional solution to the problem. They hang up a bunch of Roridula gorgonias leaves. Attracted to the shiny adhesive droplets on the leaf's hairs, the hapless pest is soon trapped by the natura...

Scientists demonstrate means of reducing Alzheimer's-like plaques in fly brain

Neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) are part of a collaboration that has succeeded in demonstrating that overexpression of an enzyme in the brain can reduce telltale deposits causally linked with Alzheimer's disease. CSHL Professor Yi Zhong, Ph.D., whose lab studies geneti...

Wasps and bumble bees heat up, fly faster with protein-rich food

Good pollen makes bees hot, biologists at UC San Diego have found. Wasps warm up too when they find protein-rich meat, a separate experiment has shown. In both cases warmer flight muscles likely speed the insects' trips home, allowing them to quickly exploit a valuable resource before competito...

Fruit fly helps identify protein critical to eggshell formation that may be pesticide target

The common fruit fly circling your week-old peach has helped scientists zero in on a protein critical to the insect's eggshell formation. The paradoxical finding gives scientists a better understanding of how the innermost protective eggshell layer forms as it points to a likely target for pest...

Fruit fly avoidance mechanism could lead to new ways to control pain in humans

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

Eliminating germline lengthens fly lifespan, Brown study shows

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] New research by Brown University biologists shows that fruit flies live longer when they dont produce germline stem cells the cells that create eggs and sperm. The work suggests a provocative general principle at work: Signals from reproductive tissue direc...

Like sweets? You're more like a fruit fly than you think...

PHILADELPHIA (March 17, 2008) -- According to researchers at the Monell Center, fruit flies are more like humans in their responses to many sweet tastes than are almost any other species. The diverse range of molecules that humans experience as sweet do not necessarily taste sweet to other sp...

Language of a fly proves surprising

LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, March 10, 2008A group of researchers has developed a novel way to view the world through the eyes of a common fly and partially decode the insects reactions to changes in the world around it. The research fundamentally alters earlier beliefs about how neural networks functi...

Researchers create mathematical model of fruit fly eyes

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Many researchers have tried to create a mathematical model of how cells pack together to form tissue, but most models have many different complicated factors, and no model is universal. Researchers at Northwestern University have now created a functional equation -- using onl...

Neuronal circuits able to rewire on the fly to sharpen senses

PITTSBURGH Researchers from the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), a joint project of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, have for the first time described a mechanism called dynamic connectivity, in which neuronal circuits are rewired on the fly allowing sti...

Genome comparison of 12 fruit fly species

Researchers from the UAB Genomics, Bioinformatics and Evolution Group participated in an international research that has resulted in the completion of the genomes of ten new fruit fly species. The study also includes new data on the evolution of the twelve currently known species during the past s...

International team compares 12 fruit fly genomes

Cornell researchers have played a major role in an international scientific team that has compared the complete set of genes of 12 closely related fruit fly species. As well has having implications for human health -- from genetic adaptation to evolving immune systems -- the analysis paves the way...

Tuning in on cellular communication in the fruit fly

WORCESTER, Mass. In their ongoing study of the processes involved in embryonic development in fruit flies, researchers at WPI's Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center at Gateway Park have identified the function of a protein that sticks out of the embryonic cell membrane like an antenna and pr...

Scientists unlock possible aging secret in genetically altered fruit fly

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] Brown University researchers have identified a cellular mechanism that could someday help fight the aging process. The finding by Stephen Helfand and Nicola Neretti and others adds another piece to the puzzle that Helfand, a professor of biology, molecular b...

A bee's future as queen or worker may rest with parasitic fly

Strange things are happening in the lowland tropical forests of Panama and Costa Rica. A tiny parasitic fly is affecting the social behavior of a nocturnal bee, helping to determine which individuals become queens and which become workers. The finding by researchers from the University of Was...

Migrating songbirds learn survival tips on the fly

(Kingston, ON) Migrating songbirds take their survival cues from local winged residents when flying through unfamiliar territory, a new Queen's University-led study shows. It's a case of "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," says biologist Joseph Nocera, who conducted the research while working...

Fruit fly gene research may shed light on human disease processes

Those small fruit flies buzzing around your bananas are more than pests—they may be allies in a fruitful search for clues to human diseases caused when genes malfunction. "One common misconception is that individual humans may carry 'disease-causing' genes, such as a gene for cancer," explains Ja...

With fruit fly sex, researchers find mind-body connection

Male fruit flies are smaller and darker than female flies. The hair-like bristles on their forelegs are shorter, thicker. Their sexual equipment, of course, is different, too. "Doublesex" is the gene largely responsible for these body differences. Doublesex, new research shows, is responsible f...

A valuable fly for research into disease

Cancer, drug addiction, neurodegenerative diseases, epilepsy, immune system defects, visual pathologies, heart disease. A tiny insect, the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) is providing an excellent model system to unravel these diseases and many others. More than 5,000 researchers worldwide are ...

Fruit fly study identifies gene mutation that regulates sensitivity to alcohol

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have discovered a gene mutation in fruit flies that alters sensitivity to alcohol. The findings, reported in the October 6 issue of the journal Cell, may have implications for human studies seeking to understand innate differences in...

Geneticists discover genes that make fruit fly hybrids sterile

While hybrids -- the result of the mating of two different species -- may offer interesting and beneficial traits, they are usually sterile or unable to survive. For example, a mule, the result of the mating of a horse and a donkey, is sterile. Now, Cornell researchers have made the first identif...

Fruit fly aggression studies have relevance to humans, animals

Even the tiny, mild-mannered fruit fly can be a little mean sometimes ?especially when there's a choice bit of rotten fruit to fight over. And, like people, some flies have shorter tempers than others. Researchers in the North Carolina Sate University genetics department have identified a suite ...

'Fruit fly dating game' provides clues to our reproductive prowess

There's growing evidence that the dinosaurs and most their contemporaries were not wiped out by the famed Chicxulub meteor impact, according to a paleontologist who says multiple meteor impacts, massive volcanism in India, and climate changes culminated in the end of the Cretaceous Period. The C...

Fire ant-attacking fly spreading rapidly in Texas

Parasitic flies introduced to control red imported fire ants have spread over four million acres in central and southeast Texas since the flies' introduction in 1999, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered using new flytraps they developed. Researchers at the Brackenrid...

Brain region linked to fly slumber

Researchers at Northwestern University have pinpointed a brain area in flies that is crucial to sleep, raising interesting speculation over the purpose of sleep and its possible link with learning and memory. In a paper to be published June 8 by the journal Nature, a team led by Ravi Allada, ass...

New fruit fly protein illuminates circadian response to light

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified a new protein required for the circadian response to light in fruit flies. The discovery of this protein ?named JET ?brings investigators one step closer to understanding the process by which the body's internal clock ...

Fruit fly reveals a potential connection between dementia and cancer

By expressing a protein associated with Alzheimer's disease in the brain of the fruit fly, researchers have demonstrated an intriguing link between neuronal death and proteins previously associated with cancer. The findings are reported by Vik Khurana, Mel Feany, and colleagues from Brigham and W...

Fruit fly research set to revolutionize study of birth defects

A Queen's University study of fruit flies that may revolutionize the way birth defects are studied has identified the genes affected by a widely-prescribed drug known to cause birth defects. Methotrexate (MTX), a popular cancer-fighting drug also used to treat psoriasis, ectopic pregnancies, rhe...

Single gene is genetic switch for fly sexual behavior

A male fly's sexual courtship of a female fly is a complicated business of tapping, singing, wing vibration, and licking, but a single gene is all that is needed to produce this complex behavior, according to new research published in this week's issue of the journal Cell. The gene encodes the F...

Locusts' built-in 'surface analysis' ability directs them to fly overland

Swarms of millions of locusts have, since Biblical times and until our very own day, been considered a "plague" of major proportions, with the creatures destroying every growing thing in their path. Until now, it was thought that the directions of these swarms were predominantly directed by preva...

Scientists devise way to measure RNA synthesis on the fly in a live cell

A team of scientists at the University of Chicago has developed a non-invasive laboratory technique that allows them to instantly map when genes are switching off and on in a living bacterium as it becomes exposed to antibiotics and other changes in its environment. The technique, which is annou...

Fruit fly studies open new window on cancer research

Scientists studying the humble fruit fly have found a family of proteins that enhances the sensitivity of a cell to a hormone that can trigger abnormal growth and cancer. Their discovery could lead to a completely new approach to tackling some cancers and the development of new drugs to stop uncont...

Remote control flies? Fly behavior controlled by laser light

Ed : Don't miss out the cool movies, link at the end of the press release! Yale University School of Medicine researchers have found a way to exercise a little mind control over fruit flies, making the flies jump, beat their wings, and fly on command by triggering genetic "remote controls" tha...

X-Ray Beams And Fruit Fly 'Flight Simulator' Aid Scientists' View Of Muscle Power

What is the connection between a fly’s aerodynamic skill and human heart function? Using the nation’s most brilliant X-rays, located at the Advanced Photon Source at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, a cardiac molecular motors expert from the University of Vermont (UVM) a...