Gene duplication adapts to changing environment
...e genomes of more and more life forms---from fruit flies to humans---they're finding ample evidence that new genes have often been created through the duplication of existing genes. Of the more than 40,000 genes in the human genome, for example, about 15,000 appear to have been produced by gene duplicatio...Undergraduate unraveling genetic mysteries in fruit flies
... Hopkins University has been breeding mutant fruit flies and studying their offspring to help find a gene r...opment of human organs. Many of the genes in fruit flies are very similar to human genes, said Comeaux, a Johns Hopkins junior and a 1999 graduate of Port Ne...Human and fly studies tally good and bad mutations, stress ongoing role of natural selection
...he minute variations within each of 45 genes among flies of one species ( Drosophila melanogaster ) and contrasted them with the same genes from a different species ( Drosophila simulans ). They found that competitive pressures were shaping about one out of four genes. Thirty-four of the 45 genes, or abou...'Wishful thinking' gene regulates neural development
...iscovery and characterization of the gene in fruit flies in articles in the February 15, 2002, issue of Ne... wit function was eliminated. Although the mutant flies died before they emerged from their pupal case, initial examination of those flies revealed no obvio...Chemical evidence proves the old adage, Birds of a feather flock together
...stern United States and Canada in the spring, then flies south to winter in various Caribbean islands including Cuba, Puerto Rico and Jamaica. Dustin Rubenstein a Ph.D. student in ecology at Cornell University and lead author of the Science study analyzed feathers and developed the statistical model use......the embryonic development of crustaceans and fruit flies allowed aquatic crustacean-like arthropods, with l...ring embryonic development. Using laboratory fruit flies and a crustacean known as Artemia, or brine shrimp, the scientists showed how modifications in the H...... of neuron cells in the brains of developing fruit flies communicate a message of survival to a different class of neighboring cells in the brain, called glial cells. The research was conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israe...Genetica, Inc. develops high throughput RNAi tool for drug target validation
...model systems such as worms (C. elegans) and fruit flies (Drosophila). Now, we can apply RNAi to mammalian cells to rapidly assess gene function." Copies of the article titled, "Stable Suppression of Gene Expression by RNAi in Mammalian Cells," are available from the PNAS news office (tel. (202) 334-2138,...Protein may be target for new cancer drugs
...the researchers revealed how specific cells in the flies stomachs absorbed a fluid tracer. The studies showed that the mutant flies had enlarged endosomes. They found that the abnormalities were due to defects in the endosomes abili......is is the first time that simply feeding a drug to flies has made them live longer. And in a twist that con...ems to be no price to pay for this extra time. The flies are as healthy and fecund as their untreated peers. Kyung-Tai Min and a team of researchers at the ...Study links El Nio to deadly South American disease
.... "We noticed that extremely high numbers of sand flies were collected during the 1997-98 season," Lau said. "That season had double the average number of Bartonellosis cases. The disease also spread to the southern part of the country, where it had not been seen before. The data lead us to believe that ...Fly cells on the move may reveal clues to cancer metastases
...ays Montell, who has been studying this process in flies for 12 years. "We've now found the first signal th...nt Debra Silver examined thousands of mutant fruit flies and identified a protein called "Unpaired" that activates stationary cells. The fruit fly ovary ...Discovery overturns long-held genetic belief
...tions from all over the world: evidence that fruit flies "must embrace diversity, even on Chromosome 4, to survive," said Long. "This should lay to rest the 70-year-old notion that the fourth chromosome is non-recombining," added Long. "We have long thought of Chromosome 4 as the 'black hole' of genetics......insons disease in both species. "We observed that flies expressing alpha-synuclein had lost about half the...70 were expressed simultaneously, these aged fruit flies exhibited normal numbers of these neurons. In fact, in the presence of Hsp70, the same number of ne...Protein protects against degeneration of neurons in fruit flies
... -- Researchers have genetically manipulated fruit flies so that the flies produce a human protein that protects against the degeneration of neurons similar to those affected ...Microbe genes help scientists reconstruct animal origins
...es used to make the very pedestrian wings of fruit flies are also those that butterflies use in different ways to make their far more colorful and shapely wings. Understanding this phenomenon has enabled scientists to track evolutionary relationships between animals by looking for common genetic themes. U...... as CREB evolutionarily conserved in species from flies to humans plays a role in rests rejuvenating effe...s a behavior found in organisms ranging from fruit flies to frogs to humans underscores its importance as a biological process. But 50 years after the disco...Scientists reveal role for nitric oxide during brain development
...ized cell types. These earlier studies using fruit flies and cultured rat nerve cell precursors indicated that controlled production of nitric oxide by cells in an embryo--the right amount at the right time in the right place--is essential for the organism to develop normally. In the new study, published ......ocesses will require seeing the whole pattern. But flies have about 15,000 genes (humans have at least twic...roject in Bohmanns lab. What we are learning about flies may give us a good model to study medically-important questions. Jasper and his colleagues used two ......ly ancient. Among these is mir-1, found in worms, flies and humans, which appears relatively specific to heart tissue. Ambros speculates that mir-1 may play a role in heart development and holds importance in some diseases of the heart. The next step is to identify all the new RNAs and determine how the...