How does a fruit fly egg label its rear end, and why should we care?
Did you ever wonder how a scientist has any fun, cooped up in the lab all day? It is easy to see the fun in field biology, where you get to study lizards on Caribbean islands, or track lions or live with mountain gorillas. But the biologist that grinds up cells and analyzes their innards — where is the fun in that? Anyone that does laboratory science knows the answer. A scientist is a detective, a solver of puzzles, and laboratory science abounds in challenging puzzles that are a lot of fun to solve. I thought this week I’d introduce you to one. The work I am going to describe is being carried out here in St. Louis, in the Washington University laboratory of Dr. Kathryn Miller. It concerns development in the fruit fly Drosophila. You might have encountered Drosophila as the tiny flies that sometimes dive into open glasses of wine. In the laboratory Drosophila is a so-called “model system,” one that biologists study in great detail in order to develop generalizations that can be applie
