fruit fly

Topic description and stories

Opinion: Can organs have a sexual identity?

24 Feb 2016

Golnar Kolahgar (Gurdon Institute) discusses the suggestion that the stem cells which allow our organs to grow “know” their own sexual identity.

Actin cables in Drosophila nurse cells during late-oogenesis. At this stage, nurse cells die and extrude their cytoplasm into the developing oocyte.

Opinion: How fruit flies can help keep African scientists at home

15 Feb 2016

Timothy Weil (Department of Zoology) and Silvia Muñoz-Descalzo (University of Bath) discuss the project that aims to make the fruit fly a model...

African universities reap fruits of fly research

10 Jul 2015

Fruit flies are proving the unlikely source of a new initiative to help improve postgraduate research opportunities in Africa, with the support of...

The fly brain is half a millimeter across and contains approximately 100,000 nerve cells (green). The A-beta peptide forms plaques (red) that are linked to nerve cell death and behavioral abnormalities in the flies. , Credit: Dr. Stanislav Ott

Scientists wake up to causes of sleep disruption in Alzheimer’s disease

27 Feb 2014

New research using fruit flies with Alzheimer’s protein finds that the disease doesn’t stop the biological clock ticking, but detaches it from the...

World first for fly research

15 Feb 2013

A how-to manual for fruit fly research has been created.

Surprising solution to fly eye mystery

11 Oct 2012

Research provides insight into why flies have the fastest vision in the animal kingdom.

Alzheimer’s: working with Drosophila

04 Jan 2011

There are over 15 million people suffering from Alzheimer's disease globally and the current cost to the economy represents at least one per cent of...

Fruit flies and test tubes shed new light on Alzheimer’s

11 Mar 2010

A team of scientists from Cambridge and Sweden have discovered a molecule that can prevent a toxic protein involved Alzheimer's disease from building...