Fly on the laboratory wall

Professor speaks about the role of fruit flies in medical research

By Marie King

In the years since the first draft of the human genome was completed, little development in terms of its benefits have actually taken place. Promised advances in the diagnostics, treatment, and prevention of common diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's remain unseen. However, in the lab of Brian Staveley, biology professor and researcher at Memorial, some small test subjects have led to big results.

On June 8, Staveley presented a lecture on his research at the Johnson Geo Centre, the last in a series of lectures given at the Geo Centre based on insects, in conjunction with the Insectarium.

"I talk about using flies—using insects—in a way that is sort of different from the way that a lot of other people exploit insects," he said. "I exploit these insects to really try to make insects useful in medical research."

In this research, Staveley's lab has had a number of successes; preventing Parkinson's-like symptoms in flies, uncovering the basis for controlled starvation, and identifying a number of fruit fly variants of human disease genes, to name a few.

In his talk, Staveley emphasized the contributions of fruit fly research throughout the past century.

It was in 1910 when the first mutant of any organism was identified: the white-eyed fruit fly, which led Thomas Hunt Morgan to develop the chromosomal theory of heredity, clarifying that genes are on chromosomes. In 1946, Hermann J. Muller won the Nobel Prize for proving that x-rays were damaging, through his research using fruit flies.

The mapping of the fruit fly genome also led to the ability to map the human genome, due to the similarity between human and fruit fly genes.

"[The genes] are so similar, so much more similar than we ever thought they would be that it's allowed us to do a lot more figuring out of what disease genes are doing in people,” said Staveley.

Seventy-five per cent of the genes associated with human genetic disorders are also present in flies.

One the goals of Staveley's lab is to model eating disorders. They can study mechanisms connected to feeding behaviour and how that is connected to growth. They also have developed a new model of Down's syndrome and are working on aspects of Huntington's disease.

"A lot of what we're able to do with flies is integrate and put together different combinations of genes, and that is why working with flies will, for a long time, still be one of the great things that you can do." Staveley said.

"Even if you have a gene knocked out in mice, and you can study the effects of a gene knocked out in mice, mice don't breed anywhere as quickly as flies. That is why we can put together combinations of genes in a way that you really can't in any other organism."

Brian Staveley's research is funded by Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grants, the Parkinson's Society of Canada, the Banting Research Foundation, and MUN. For more information on his research, visit his website at, www.mun.ca/biology/desmid/brian/BES.html. For more information on the Johnson Geo Centre Lecture Series', visit, www.geocentre.ca.

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