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Erica McAlister examines the innocuous flies that are Drosophila melanogaster. More is known about these flies than any other animal on the planet, as a model for human genetics.

Erica McAlister examines the innocuous flies that are Drosophila melanogaster. They’d be content to spend life doing nothing much more than hovering around a pile of rotting apples and getting drunk. But we now know more about these flies than any other animal on the planet, as a model for human biology and genetics - on earth and now in space.

With contributions from : behavioural geneticist Prof. Matthew Cobb, University of Manchester; Dr. Stephanie Mohr, Harvard university and author of First in Fly; Sharmila Bhattacharya, NASA's chief scientist for Space Biology.

Producer: Adrian Washbourne

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15 minutes

Last on

Thu 22 Jul 2021 09:30

Broadcast

  • Thu 22 Jul 2021 09:30