Kindred Spirits
By Hayley Birch
Apparently if you feed ethanol to a fruit fly its behaviour will bear a remarkable resemblance to your own when you've had a skin full. Lack of coordination, sleepiness; you know, you've been there. Now according to scientists at North Carolina State University, drunkenness could also affect our genes in very similar ways.
Tatiana Morozova and her colleagues used microarray analysis – a technique which can show how much a particular gene is expressed – to pinpoint fly genes whose expression altered after alcohol consumption. More than 500 of those identified had known human counterparts.
Flies even build up tolerance when repeatedly intoxicated. If you were given ten tequila slammers every night for a month you might soon be able to drink fifteen before being carried away from the karaoke. Well, fruit flies are the same – the more often they get drunk, the more drink it takes. And how did scientists discover this? Why, with an "inebriometer" of course. This is a long glass tube containing mesh, which is used to measure how long a paralytic fly takes to fall. Flies tend to fall more slowly after a number of drinking sessions than following the initial bender.
The proposition then, is that flies could be used as models to learn more about alcohol sensitivity and alcohol related behaviour in people. This to avoid plying human test subjects with vast quantities of vodka. However, I rather suspect scientists have missed a trick here – if you work at a university, you should be able to find a whole host of people conducting their own alcohol related experiments every night of the week.
To read more about Hayley or to view more of her articles click here.
Tatiana Morozova and her colleagues used microarray analysis – a technique which can show how much a particular gene is expressed – to pinpoint fly genes whose expression altered after alcohol consumption. More than 500 of those identified had known human counterparts.
Flies even build up tolerance when repeatedly intoxicated. If you were given ten tequila slammers every night for a month you might soon be able to drink fifteen before being carried away from the karaoke. Well, fruit flies are the same – the more often they get drunk, the more drink it takes. And how did scientists discover this? Why, with an "inebriometer" of course. This is a long glass tube containing mesh, which is used to measure how long a paralytic fly takes to fall. Flies tend to fall more slowly after a number of drinking sessions than following the initial bender.
The proposition then, is that flies could be used as models to learn more about alcohol sensitivity and alcohol related behaviour in people. This to avoid plying human test subjects with vast quantities of vodka. However, I rather suspect scientists have missed a trick here – if you work at a university, you should be able to find a whole host of people conducting their own alcohol related experiments every night of the week.
To read more about Hayley or to view more of her articles click here.
Image: Dawn Allynn (face) & Davide Guglielmo (fly)/SXC
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