Science / Medicine : Test Uses Flies as Guinea Pigs

For the first time, scientists have inserted human genes into fruit flies with the hope that the flies will eventually replace rats and mice in cancer experiments.

The development, reported in the EMBO Journal, the European journal of molecular biology, could have vast implications for studying how environmental agents trigger cancer, how human enzymes fend off disease and how the body breaks down drugs, said pharmacologist Roland Wolf of the University of Edinburgh.

What’s more, the one-milligram Drosophila fruit fly is cheaper, has a very simple genetic system that lends itself to study and is more “socially acceptable than the rather unpopular mammal studies,” said co-investigator Trevor Jowett of the University of Newcastle.

Cell biologist Spyridon Artavanis-Tsakonas of Yale University said it “may be jumping the gun” to say flies will replace mammals in cancer testing, but “it is not an unreasonable hope.”