Scientists Adam Spierer and David Rand of Brown University have recently uncovered the genetics behind flies and their amazing ability to fly. Flies rely on their flight for courtship, food, and transportation. Scientists previously knew little about the interactions among genes that allow flies’ flight, but in Spierer and Rand’s new study, a genetic analysis was performed on 197 genetically different fly lines, revealing the the flies’ performance to different genes and networks of gene-gene and protein-protein interactions. They discovered the gene called pickpocket 23 (ppk23) that is integral for the interactions of these genes. Pickpocket family genes affect proprioception, the “sense of how the body moves in space.”
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