Model Systems You have been following the recent presidentia

Model Systems: You have been following the recent presidential elections and have heard some candidates disparaging excessive and \"unnecessary\" federal government expenditures. One particular candidate asks: \"Why are we spending millions of dollars studying fruit flies? How can that possibly help us find a cure for cancer?\"

Use your knowledge of model organisms to explain why studies in D. melanogaster (the fruit fly) are actually an excellent use of research funding.

Solution

After lab rats and guineapigs, the most popular go-to research animal is Drosophila melanogaster - the fruit fly. This species helped us to learn about all the mysteries of developmental processes of the human body and molecules that regulate these processes. This organism provides us with a huge amount of genetic knowledge that helps the scientists with their researches.

The major advantages of working with the fruitfly are as follows:

1. They are very cheap to raise

2. They can be bred in small bottles

3. They have a life span of about 10 days, as a result many generations of the fly can be bred within a short time.

This led to many iconic discoveries in the field of molecular bioogy. It was later found out that genes that monitor the development of organs in Drosophila have the same function in our body. Thus, analysis of human genome became much simpler when performed on Drosophila as the fly contains only 4 pairs of chromosomes while we have 23 pairs. Many human diseases could be conquered by studying their analogous genes in the fruitfly.

Coming to the topic about the cure for cancer, fruitflies are used by scientists to treat cancer in a customised manner. They go through the genetic analysis of a certain person\'s malignant tumor and note which genes are not working properly. Then their analogous genes in the fruitfly are pointed out and their nature, function, growth are ovserved in order to understand how the cancer-causing genes work. This also gives the opportunity to experiment potential ways of treating cancer. This simplifies the whole process of treating cancer.

Thus studies on fruitfly are an excellent use of research funding which are very much necessary to treat diseases.