Tag: Fruit flies

  • Science & Tech

    ‘The Last of Us,’ fruit fly edition

    Postdoc Carolyn Elya sheds light on how parasitic fungus hijacks the nervous system of flies.

    4–6 minutes
    Fruit fly with fungal outgrowth.
  • Science & Tech

    Where we get our sense of direction

    Using virtual reality experiments, Harvard neuroscientists have decoded how fruit fly brains integrate visual cues for navigation. Study also sheds light on a form of short-term memory known as unsupervised learning.

    5–8 minutes
    Fruit fly up close.
  • Health

    The love lives of fruit flies

    Harvard study reveals how the neurobiology of fruit fly courtship can help illuminate understanding of human disorders of motivation.

    5–7 minutes
    fruit flies
  • Health

    Solving a biological mystery

    A team of Harvard researchers has shown that insects like crickets possess a variation of a gene — called oskar — that is critical to the production of germ cells in “higher” insects. That discovery suggests that the oskar gene emerged far earlier in insect evolution than researchers previously believed.

    3–5 minutes