Researchers of fundamental biology tell Akhila Seetharaman why fruit flies are so important to them.
 While most fruit flies spend their two-week lives hovering over overripe bananas, a sizable section of their population serve as stand-ins for humans in laboratories such as the ones at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, where they aid the understanding of genetics.
“Here is an animal with a very small number of neurons, which makes it less complex. Therefore it becomes much easier to understand how neurons, when shut down or activated, relate to different kinds of behaviour,” explained K VijayRaghavan, Director of the institute, who studies neurobiology and locomotion. In fact, the fruit fly (or Drosophila) is so useful to understanding fundamental biology that it is the most researched animal in the world, said VijayRaghavan. After all, we’re not all that different from fruit flies since, he pointed out,they learn, remember and even have taste. Like males of other species, they’re more aggressive when competing for female attention. “What’s interesting is that a single socially demeaning contact reduces aggressive behaviour in the future,” said VijayRaghavan, adding that it’s almost as if the loser in the contest ends up scarred.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that researchers from around the world are gathering at the National Centre for Biological Sciences this fortnight for the Bangalore Maggot Meeting, a three-day conference on fruit flies and their larvae.
By serving as model systems for fundamental research, fruit flies, housed in cotton-plugged test tubes, are helping scientists understand DNA, the building blocks of organisms, leading to insights that could mean major leaps in cancer research, knowledge about the human brain and mobility. Others at the NCBS carry out cutting-edge research on equally unglamorous subjects: single-celled organisms, bacteria, insects and worms. There’s even research taking place on stressed out rats.
 Mukund Thattai, who studies bacteria, explained that genes can be turned on and off. “For example, when in milk, bacteria switch on a gene that causes lactose to be degraded,” he said. “If you have one gene, you have two possibilities, on or off. With every extra gene, the possibilities grow exponentially.”
But until recently there was very little public engagement with fundamental or cellular biology research of this kind. “It’s not the same as dinosaurs or galaxies,” said Thattai. Unlike astronomy or conservation, subjects which have sizable amateur followings, cellular biology has so far remained in the realm of the scientist, he said. The mapping of the human genome in 2000 by the Human Genome Project definitely created a lot of public awareness about the field, admitted Thattai, as have popular television series like CSI that refer to forensic science and genetics.
Institutions like the NCBS are also taking non-traditional steps to reach out to non-scientists and develop new perspectives on science. Theatrescience, an initiative funded by the Wellcome Trust, enabled playwrights and performing artists to interact with scientists at NCBS and led to the production of plays on themes of science and society in January 2009. Earlier this year, Thattai and others from NCBS hosted artists from Srishti School of Art and Design as they approached “synthetic biology” from their perspective and, through the process, created work using bacteria instead of traditional art supplies (one project attempted to replicate the smell of rain, which is caused by bacteria). “[Artists’] critical perspectives can have an impact on the kind of science we choose to do and the way we do it,” said Thattai.
The NCBS is interested in making their science more publicly accessible. “We’re planning on setting up a Facebook page and a YouTube channel,” said Geoff Hyde, who teaches courses on communication at the institute. However, Hyde pointed out that despite the depth of research being carried out, “researchers need to make connections with other areas of biology when writing so that they can be understood, not only among specialists, but also among generalists in the field.”
“Ultimately, communicating scientific research is about story-telling,” he said. “In the past, communicating science well was assigned very low priority, when in fact it is essential to building a body of knowledge.” |
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