The fly's time: Biological clockwork of human beings and flies comparable
The Drosophila, the so-called fruit fly, attends all day long to its activities. It flutters, has naps, lays its eggs or emerges from the pupa, the stage of metamorphosis preceding maturity. At the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, the team of the researcher in biology Emi Nagoshi is closely interested in this insect, used as a model organism for the study of circadian rhythms in the animal kingdom. The researcher's group discovered that the main clock of the Drosophila, formed by neurons clustered in various regions of the brain, is controlled by mechanisms similar to those regulating the internal clock of mammals. This study, described in the journal Current Biology, demonstrates how very distant organisms, displaying different circadian activities, can present the same type of biological clock gears.