That fruit fly joining you just moments after you poured that first glass of cabernet, has just used its poppy-seed-sized brain to conduct a finely-choreographed search, one that’s been described for the first time by researchers at the University of Washington.
The search mission is another example of fruit flies executing complex behaviors with very little “computational” power, their brains having 100,000 neurons compared to house flies with 300,000 neurons and humans with 100 billion. (more…)
In yeast at least, the aging process appears to reduce an organism’s ability to silence certain genes that need to be silenced. Now researchers at Brown University who study the biology of aging have shown that the loss of genetic control occurs in fruit flies as well. Results appear online in the journal Aging.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Biologists at Brown University have found a way to measure the effects of aging by watching the ebb and flow of chromatin, a structure along strands of DNA that either silences or permits gene expression. In several newly published experiments they show that gene silencing via chromatin in fruit flies declines with age. (more…)
Brown University biologists have uncovered a complicated chain of molecular events that leads from insulin to protein degradation in muscles and significantly diminished life span in fruit flies. The new study in PLoS Genetics, which may have broad implications across species, identifies the fly version of the mammalian protein activin as the central culprit in the process.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Fruit flies are notoriously short-lived but scientists interested in the biology of aging in all animals have begun to understand why some fruit flies live longer than others. They have documented a direct association between insulin and life span, for example, and have observed a tradeoff between prolific reproduction and longevity. A new study, which may have broad implications across species, ties those findings more closely together by tracing an insulin signaling cascade through to protein quality control in muscle tissue and shortened life span. (more…)
A classic study from more than 60 years ago suggesting that males are more promiscuous and females more choosy in selecting mates may, in fact, be wrong, say life scientists who are the first to repeat the historic experiment using the same methods as the original.
In 1948, English geneticist Angus John Bateman published a study showing that male fruit flies gain an evolutionary advantage from having multiple mates, while their female counterparts do not. Bateman’s conclusions have informed and influenced an entire sub-field of evolutionary biology for decades.
“Bateman’s 1948 study is the most-cited experimental paper in sexual selection today because of its conclusions about how the number of mates influences fitness in males and females,” said Patricia Adair Gowaty, a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA. “Yet despite its important status, the experiment has never been repeated with the methods that Bateman himself originally used, until now. (more…)
University biologists have found a new molecule in fruit flies that is key to the information exchange needed to build wings properly. They have also uncovered evidence that an analogous protein may exist in people and may be associated with problems such as cleft lip, or premature ovarian failure.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — As they work together to form body parts, cells in developing organisms communicate like workers at a construction site. The discovery of a new signaling molecule in flies by Brown University biologists not only helps explain how cells send many long-haul messages, but also provides new clues for researchers who study how human development goes awry, for instance in cases of cleft lip and palate. (more…)
Predators select their prey in order to eat a nutritionally balanced diet and give themselves the best chance of producing healthy offspring.
A University of Exeter and Oxford-led study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows for the first time that predatory animals choose their food on the basis of its nutritional value, rather than just overall calorie content.
An international team of scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Oxford in the UK, University of Sydney (Australia), Aarhus University (Denmark) and Massey University (New Zealand) based their research on the ground beetle, Anchomenus dorsalis, a well-known garden insect that feasts on slugs, aphids, moths, beetle larvae and ants. (more…)
*RNA editing is a key step in gene expression. Scientists at Brown University report in Nature Methods that they have engineered a gene capable of visually displaying the activity of the key enzyme ADAR in living fruit flies.*
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To track what they can’t see, pilots look to the green glow of the radar screen. Now biologists monitoring gene expression, individual variation, and disease have a glowing green indicator of their own: Brown University biologists have developed a “radar” for tracking ADAR, a crucial enzyme for editing RNA in the nervous system.
The advance gives scientists a way to view when and where ADAR is active in a living animal and how much of it is operating. In experiments in fruit flies described in the journal Nature Methods, the researchers show surprising degrees of individual variation in ADAR’s RNA editing activity in the learning and memory centers of the brains of individual flies. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Research by a team of Michigan State University scientists has shed new light on why some body parts are more sensitive to environmental change than others, work that could someday lead to better ways of treating a variety of diseases, including Type-2 diabetes.
The research, led by assistant zoology professor Alexander Shingleton, is detailed in the recent issue of the Proceedings of the Library of Science Genetics. (more…)
