How can the fruit fly help scientists better understand human diseases?
More than two-thirds of human disease genes have a corresponding gene in the fruit fly. This is good news, because after scientists isolate a human disease gene, the next challenge is to determine the biochemical mechanism it’s involved in. Fortunately, we can much more easily discover a gene’s function in fruit flies than in humans, which will inform our understanding of the human disease. There are dozens of examples of how this has already advanced our understanding of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. What strengths do big multidisciplinary labs like Berkeley Lab bring to genome research? There are several reasons why the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project couldn’t have been done in Berkeley if the Lab didn’t exist. Berkeley Lab is used to providing large amounts of space to projects that have a short duration. At our peak, we had nearly 60 people at Berkeley Lab working on the project, and there is no way you can get that kind of space on campus. Secondly, in the early days,
