fruit fly – BioQuakes

All Organs are Sexual!

On February 29, 2016

Well, in the sense that female non-sexual organs and male non-sexual organs aren’t the same, as they’ve been commonly considered to be. According to a team at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre (CSC), at Imperial College London, the stem cells that make up your organs do have a sexual identity attached to them, and thus behave differently than their sexual counterparts. In this study, a female fruit fly’s gut was observed to have enlarged after mating, likely due to the increased nutritional intake to rear healthy offspring. The reason this isn’t done all the time is that this makes it more likely for tumors to develop in the gut, so this is only done when the sake of their progeny is at stake.

(This fruit fly may be female, but her intestines were made to identify as male. There’s potentially some conflicted gender identity.)

What’s interesting is that when the female fruit fly was given male gut stem cells, the gut no longer enlarged after mating, and retained the smaller gut size of males. It turns out that the sex organs are not the only organs that have a sexual identity. At least, in fruit flies. No tests have been done on human organs yet, although it is believed that the principle will hold true, albeit in potentially different ways.

(Artist rendition of stem cells)

Medically this is significant since it may lead to explanations or understandings of how and why male and female patients may need different medical treatments since their organs function somewhat differently. Furthermore, it continues to advance our understanding of how males and females are different based on the nuances of the physical workings of their body. Overall, it’s very confusing when you apply this to gender theory.

But humans have had a poor understanding of their own bodies and inner workings for thousands of years. Is it possible that this is on the path to a deeper understanding of our physiology as a gendered species, or that these differences are conditional and minute, as I so far believe?

Epigenetic breakthrough: A first of its kind tool to study the histone code

By menstruation

On March 10, 2015

In Student Post

Scientists at the University of North Carolina have recently made a breakthrough in the study of epigenetics, particularly enzyme modification of histones. Histones, the structures to which our DNA binds in the nucleus, play a pivotal role in gene expression. In other words, histone and enzyme interaction control which genes are expressed in which cells during certain times. Epigenetics is the study of how this process works. Tightening or loosening histones can turn a certain gene off or on. The study of this process has been difficult given the size of the genome and number of different histone-enzyme interactions dispersed through the sizable sequence of DNA. The Enzymes place specific chemical markers on the histones that cause the gene regulation to occur, but scientists have been unable to determine which enzymes affect what genes and how. However, the scientists at UNC have recently conducted a study with the fruit fly genome that has given them a large amount of data. The fruit fly genome contains all of its epigenetic markers in the same place. The scientists were able to insert synthesized gene regulating enzymes in place of the originals and determine the function of each individual enzyme by simply observing what was affected by the new enzymes. This research is crucial for the understanding of how the human genome is regulated, possibly leading to the cure for many illnesses.

Article Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150210142008.htm

Out Like a Light: Sleep Switch in Brain Identified

By karbonkim

On February 27, 2014

In Student Post

Researchers from Oxford University’s Center of Neural Circuits and Behavior have identified the switch in the brain, which causes sleep, from a study of fruit flies. This switch regulates sleep promoting neurons in the brain. When one is tired and in need of sleep, these neurons will activate. Once you are fully rested, neuron activity will die down. Though this new insight was gained through studying fruit flies, or Drosophila, the researchers believe this information is also relevant to humans. In the human brain, there are similar neurons that are active during sleep and are the targets of general anesthetics that cause sleep. These facts support the idea that humans have a sleep mechanism like that found in fruit flies, according to Dr. Jeffrey Donlea, one of the lead authors of the study. The findings of this study were published in the journal, Neuron.The discovery of this sleep switch is important for a number of reasons like finding new treatments for sleep disorders, but it is just a small piece of the enigma that is sleep. The internal signal, which this sleep switch responds to, is still unknown, as is the activity of these sleep-promoting cells while we are awake. We do not even know why humans and all other animals need sleep.

In spite of these mysterious, scientists do know how the body regulates sleep. Humans and animals have a body clock, which makes us accustomed to the 24 hour cycle of day and night, and a sleep switch, which logs the hours you are awake and causes you to sleep when you need rest. When this mechanism is off or not being used, sleep deficiency increases. The combination of these two is the most likely cause of us sleeping at night.

The significance of this switch in the process of sleep and its relationship to bodily function was found when studying the fruit flies. If they did not sleep, mutant flies cannot regain these lost sleep hours. Sleep-deprived flies are also more likely to nod off and be cognitively impaired. Like sleep-deprived humans, these flies were subject to severe learning and memory deficiencies. In the mutant flies, the researchers proved the insomnia of the flies was due to a broken part of the electrical activity switch, which caused the sleep-inducing neurons to always be off.

Why do you think sleep is important? How is this discovery significant and how do you think this information will be used in the future? Will the mystery of sleep be solved soon?

Photograph by Pedro Ribeiro Simões

Cancer and Fruit Flies

By biosasha11

On January 5, 2013

In Student Post

Photo by Malcolm NQ from Flickr

A recent study has found a way to track each step of a healthy cell as it becomes cancerous. Researchers were able to study the “genes and molecules involved in each step.”

The researchers provoked genomic instability in the cells of the fruit fly’s wing, or the Drosophila melanogaster, and allowed these cells to withstand the organism’s natural defenses. The scientists were able to see the cancer spreading throughout the cell and invading nearby organelles and cell structures. According to one scientist, Andres Dekanty, “for the first time we have a genetic model that allows us to understand the events that take place, starting from when cells begin to accumulate genomic errors until the development of a tumor.”

Furthermore, the researchers at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine believe that their research will be important for determining if cancer is caused by genomic instability. If this proves to be true, scientists and doctors will have a specific target to study, and to treat.

Researchers believe that the key to curing caner is identifying the difference between normal, healthy cells and a cell with genomic instability. Dekanty hopes that since “there isn’t a treatment available that attacks only the cells with genomic instability, if we can clearly differentiate one from the other, we’ll hopefully be able to find drugs that target them specifically.”

This study is of major importance because today, cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy have many side effects because they aim to stop cell division in both infected and healthy cells. New, more precise treatments could stem out of this study.

Could it be more than a Simple Physical Attraction?

By aminoalix

On February 28, 2012

In Student Post

Ever wonder why there are so many cougars around these days, or so many older men dating younger women?

It’s not just because of a physical attraction. In fact, attraction in humans and in fruit flies relates to pheromones, or “the chemicals of love.” In the recent Biology News article “Fruit Flies Drawn to the Sweet Smell of Youth,” I learned that cuticular hydrocarbons,which are the pheromones of fruit flies, change with age. In an experiment run by Tsung-Han Kuo, a ” a graduate student in the department of molecular and human genetics and the Huffington Center on Aging at BCM,” it was obvious that the male fruit fly was attracted much more to the young female fruit fly than the older female fruit fly. This was even true when the male fruit fly could not see the flies because the scientist had made the room dark. Interestingly enough, all it took for the male fruit fly to be confused about which woman to choose was to wipe the pheromones, or rather the cuticular hydrocarbons, off the bodies of the female fruit flies. When this occurred, the male fruit fly was rather ambivalent and flummoxed with the decision over which fly to choose to mate with. This tells us that pheromonesmake all the difference, an

most significantly to this article, they spark fly attraction. I believe that this pheromone attraction could be the true reason why many individuals stray from their significant others to find “hotter” and “sexier” partners.

A Dead Fruit Fly.

To sum all this up, based on our experiments in class, we know that fruit flies produce massive numbers of children, and as these female fruit flies age, the male fruit flies that they have mated with in the past are vastly less interested and attracted to the aging female pheromone.

BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Tag: fruit fly

All Organs are Sexual!

Epigenetic breakthrough: A first of its kind tool to study the histone code

Out Like a Light: Sleep Switch in Brain Identified

Cancer and Fruit Flies

Could it be more than a Simple Physical Attraction?

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