#8 THE FRUIT FLY – Drosophila melanogaster
We’ve got them drunk. We’ve reprogrammed their memories with lasers. We’ve ‘taught’ them to count. Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, is possibly the most famous model organism, regularly making headlines. The species is favored primarily for its simplicity, fertility and unfussy eating habits. They have been engineered to develop hundreds of human diseases, including diabetes, kidney stones and cancers. More recently, fruit flies have been used to study aging, with researchers identifying specific genes whose activity can be used to predict when a fly is close to death.
