Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
In a finding that has the potential to significantly speed up diabetes research, scientists at the University of Maryland have discovered that fruit flies respond to insulin at the cellular level much like humans do, making these common, easily bred insects good subjects for laboratory experiments in new treatments for diabetes.
The common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster looks like a sesame seed with wings, produces offspring by the thousands, and lives for around a month. These creatures don't resemble humans in any obvious way, but they share more than sixty percent of our genetic code. And scientists like UMD's Leslie Pick and Georgeta Crivat are finding that those similarities control basic biological processes that work alike in both species.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-11-diabetic-flies-disease-fighting.html
The common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster looks like a sesame seed with wings, produces offspring by the thousands, and lives for around a month. These creatures don't resemble humans in any obvious way, but they share more than sixty percent of our genetic code. And scientists like UMD's Leslie Pick and Georgeta Crivat are finding that those similarities control basic biological processes that work alike in both species.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-11-diabetic-flies-disease-fighting.html
