neurolove:

In defense of fruit fly research…

As another American presidential race is coming up fast, I am reminded of how Sarah Palin in the 2008 election race famously said (and I am quoting) that we spend money on “projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”  I’m not getting political- I’m very moderate and I have nothing against either conservatives or liberals.  This quote was mostly very disappointing because it showed that the public (including representatives of the people) is really far removed from the scientific community and is ignorant of what is going on in with science and what we really do.  I actually totally understand why she or anyone else would say that, because it really doesn’t logically make sense how anything done with a fly could benefit people- we’re so different!

That’s actually one of the reasons I decided to start blogging in the first place.  The public should know and should be able to understand what we do in the scientific community.  I think it would improve both the general populace to have that knowledge and the quality of the science that is being done.  Anyway, let’s talk about model organisms.  When I say model organisms, I mean organisms that are very simple in structure and have systems that can be easily manipulated to model human systems but are far removed from humans in appearance- things like fruit flies (Drosophila), worms (C. elegans), crayfish, zebra fish, and others.  So why would you do research in fruit flies?  How does that benefit the public good?

Model organisms are a simple and inexpensive way to examine one system in relative isolation.  In physics, this would be how they talk about their principles and rules working “in a vacuum” (an example for people who are more up on physics than biomedical research if that helps you).  In biomedical research, with model organisms, you can then change that one problem that you are interested in, examine how you might fix or change it, and figure out all the kinks before you have all the extra “noise” of a much more complicated system like in humans.  Let’s start with fruit flies.  A lot of what we know about the sense of smell comes from fruit flies.  You can fairly easily introduce different odor receptors into fruit flies and see which odors they respond to… you can do this with human odor receptors- or even mosquito odor receptors.  Why would you want to?  Well, for one huge thing, I am sure you have heard of malaria?  Malaria is an awful (and not uncommon in many places) disease carried by mosquitoes.  What makes mosquitoes attracted to humans?  By transplanting that DNA into fruit flies and studying their neural responses to odors from human sweat, for instance, you could find out.  Further, you can develop chemicals that would prevent mosquitoes from wanting to bite humans.  John Carlson, a researcher here at Yale, has been heavily involved in this type of research- and he’s really a very smart and interesting guy.  A recent article from his work with another fruit fly lab can be found here.

As another example, worms (and crayfish- which I have worked with before) are useful for looking into neurogenesis (or neuron birth).  C. elegans, a popular worm, has a small number of neurons that grow is one set pattern and so are easy to study and manipulate.  Mutations can be induced quickly and with a great multitude, so you can study which genes might contribute and disrupt neural growth.  Why would this sort of thing matter?  You may have heard people say that you don’t grow new neurons after you are born?  Well, that’s not entirely true, but some neurons can’t grow back once they’ve been severed- like those in the spinal cord.  If we could figure out how to make those grow, we might be able to help people who are paralyzed.  Further, there is a whole list of disorders caused by improper neuronal migration (neurons move from where they are born to where they end up in your brain during development) that if we knew more about, we might be able to prevent.

Anyway, I just want to be sure that the next time someone talks about model organism research, you all can say that it’s really important and understand why!

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(via thekeri)