Human Aging Gene Found In Flies Scientists have discovered a fast and effective way to investigate important aspects of human aging: a gene in fruit flies that means flies can now be used to study the effects aging has on DNA. The researchers found that flies with damage to this gene share important features with people suffering from the rapid aging condition Werner syndrome.
Fruit Fly Avoidance Mechanism Could Lead To New Ways To Control Pain In Humans At first, fruit flies eat like horses. Hatching inside over-ripe fruit where they were laid, they feed wildly in the sugar-rich environment until nature sends them an offer they can't refuse. To survive, they must leave the fruit, wander off and burrow into the earth where they avoid food as if it were poison. Only then can the larvae grow and hatch into flies that will take wing to lay their own eggs. Researchers have now discovered that the important developmental switch from food attraction to aversion in the fruit fly larva is controlled by a timing mechanism in the brain and its sensory system. The study shows how this important avoidance mechanism has been recruited into evolutionary processes to promote development and could lead to new methods of controlling pain in humans and other animals.
How Embryonic Stem Cells Develop Into Tissue-specific Cells Demonstrated While it has long been known that embryonic stem cells have the ability to develop into any kind of tissue-specific cells, the exact mechanism as to how this occurs has heretofore not been demonstrated. Now, researchers have succeeded in graphically revealing this process, resolving a long-standing question as to whether the stem cells achieve their development through selective activation or selective repression of genes.
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