According to Sarah Palin the answer warrants a laugh, a wink and a failed "policy speech". Fortunately, leading scientists and geneticists disagree. They treat the question with the same respect that Flemming showed to mold which lead to the discovery of Penicilin, of course.
Genetically speaking, people and fruit flies are surprisingly alike, explains biologist Sharmila Bhattacharya of NASA's Ames Research Center. "About 61% of known human disease genes have a recognizable match in the genetic code of fruit flies, and 50% of fly protein sequences have mammalian analogues."
http://science.nasa.gov/...
Additionally, NASA seems to agree not with Mrs. Palin and her glasses that make her look smart but surprisingly with those guys in the cheap white coats. Fruit flies, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration believes, are about to become the genetic model for astronaut research scientists on both the space shuttle and the international space station more so than even mice.
There was previous research done using mice, but that did not produce results. Mice have a total of three different genes code that produce certain neurexin proteins. When one of them was deleted, there were no effects and when all three were removed, the mice died. Fruit flies, on the other hand, only have one gene for neurexin. When they deleted the gene, the flies survived but only barely
But where do they(the fruit flies) benefit people, especially those with deleterous disease?
That's why fruit flies, known to scientists as Drosophila melanogaster, are commonplace in genetic research labs. They can be good substitutes for people. They reproduce quickly, so that many generations can be studied in a short time, and their genome has been completely mapped. "Drosophila is being used as a genetic model for several human diseases including Parkinson's and Huntington's," notes Bhattacharya.
The groundbreaking research mentioned tonight on Countdown, which Mrs. Palin obviously missed, was conducted by the Chapel Hill School of Medicine Autism. Found was that the fruit fly may have opened the Autistic spectrum door wide open to new understanding and benefit.
New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine has discovered that there is a protein called neurexin that must be there or else the nerve cell connections do not form and/or function properly.
The researchers worked with Drosophila fruit flies and they hope the results will enable scientists to gain a better understanding of autism spectrum disorders. It is already known that human newrexin are a genetic risk factor for autism.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/...
Still not convinced? Maybe this breif summary of the scientific worth of fruit flies seen in a few recent headlines will sway you.
• Courtship pattern shaped by emergence of a new gene in fruit flies
... gene known as sphinx is inactivated in the common fruit fly, it leads to increased male-male ... D. melanogaster possessed the sphinx gene--and other fly species did not. In order to study the function ...
• Fruit fly protein acts as decoy to capture tumor growth factors, find Penn researchers
... Pennsylvania School of Medicine have shown how Argos, a fruit fly protein, acts as a ¡¥decoy' receptor, ... Argos works this way in the fruit fly, binding and neutralizing the fly version of EGF called ...
• Fruit fly helps identify protein critical to eggshell formation that may be pesticide target
The common fruit fly circling your week-old peach has helped scientists zero in on a protein critical to the insect's eggshell formation. The paradoxical finding gives scientists a ...
• Microsurgery on the brain of the fruit fly leads to new insights into irreparable nerve injuries
... for studying damaged nerve bundles The researchers have used this new technique explicitly to develop a fruit fly model for the regeneration of axons after injury. With the aid of micro-dissection, ...
• Fruit flies have internal thermosensors
WALTHAM, Mass., June 16 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they have discovered fruit flies have internal thermosensors that help them find the optimal ambient temperature range for survival.
• Even fruit flies have an orientation memory: Recall tested in a virtual space
... location of their destination in situations in which they temporarily lose sight of it. This ability, known as orientation memory, is found in primates and has now also been observed in fruit flies.
• Seminal fluid secrets revealed -- new method identifies male proteins in female fruit fly
In the 1960's scientists began to examine the seminal fluid of Drosophila – the fruit fly favoured by geneticists - and found that it has an important role in the mating process in its own ...
• Olfactory fine-tuning helps fruit flies find their mates
... smells like ripe bananas, or food to a fruit fly. "We applied natural odors to the antennae, ... wafted concentrated banana smell onto the flies' antennae, he found increases in signaling by a molecule ...
• Stanford fruit-fly study adds weight to theories about another type of adult stem cell
... de facto stem cell during the fruit-fly life cycle. The surprising discovery ... different kinds of progenitor cells in a single fruit-fly tissue raises the possibility that there may be more than one kind ...
• Fruit Flies Provide Insight Into Bacterial Infections In HumansResearchers have used a fruit fly (Drosophila) model of infection to provide new insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying the virulence of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is a ...
• Human aging gene found in flies... and we need effort to understand normal ageing and the characteristics that accompany it." "Fruit flies are already used as a model for the genetics behind mechanisms that underlie normal functioning ...
Basically from the few minutes of research that I, a scientific ignoramous, conducted on the internets, it is apparent that fruit flies are an essential component to modern medical research into a magnitude of human health areas, not just Autism.