The Weirdest Things We've Done to Fruit Flies | Compilation

Fruit flies are common uninvited guests in our houses, so you might not feel so bad about all of the wild experiments we put them through for the last hundred years. But man have they been run through the ringer.

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Original Episodes:

[aleccandib]

9:48 I’m a fruit fly researcher in a lab that studies aging and neural stressors, our wild-type (ie “normal”) flies typically have an average lifespan of 30-50 days, which is a lot longer than most people expect. But the gestation period (from egg through larvae, pupa, and to adulthood) is only 10ish days, so its still easy to study multiple generations very quickly.

Of course genetics, nutrition, temperature, humidity, and a bunch of other stuff can drastically increase or decrease lifespan and gestation time. The longest lifespan we’ve recorded in an individual fly was over 100 days- that fly had a mutation that increased autophagy, which is a process the cell uses to dispose of protein aggregates and old mitochondria

[aleccandib]

Fly people are also very creative when it comes to gene names! Some of my favorites are:
sonic hedgehog
swiss cheese (knockout causes holes in the brain)
I’m not dead yet (indy)
fear of intimacy
sex lethal
skeletor
smaug
tinman (knockout causes heart defects)
kenny (as in Kenny from South Park, knockout causes death in the first few days of life)
cheap date (knockout causes susceptibility to alcohol)

[MichaelEnsly]

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana

[demonatemu]

i remember we learned about genetics in my high school biology class and each group had a different mutation i.e. "white eyes instead of red", "no wings", "glow in the dark" etc. I was glad I wasn't the group that had "legs instead of antennae"

[Sarafan]

That fruitfly ejaculation experiment was the most hilariously absurd yet interesting experiment I've ever seen.

[hans]

I remember reading a white paper that detailed aggression in fruit flys in response to being swatted at. Where they'd harass the swatter. In my experience that strategy doesn't end well for them.

[sMillenial]

"Activating the ejaculation neuron of a fruit fly..." is a totally new phrase that I learned.

[cadensauerbrey]

In undergrad school, my genetics class did a study on carcinogenic genes in fruitflies and traced them back to the same gene in humans. It was super cool and helped us learn more about tumors and how to treat them.

[wumplepuff]

One of my favourite things people have ever done with fruit flies is that one time they gave them a ton of oxygen and they got slightly bigger lmao

[nyx]

"Red light district." I absolutely snorted.

[mrbismarck]

I worked in IT for a year at a place that experimented on fruit flies. Someone there showed me how to look at a batch of fruit flies and pick out the virgins. I didn't ask him why he needed to know that.

[jamesmccollom]

Sleep isn't something we need, it's something so valuable that we don't want to miss it.
Take it from someone that is in chronic pain. There's countless days of little to no sleep

[MiniMii]

Could you imagine having a whole box full of those flies that can nut on command you're about to initiate an experiment with these guys and your new intern accidentally turns on the red light?

[EmilyJelassi]

It’s very weird knowing that we share that many genes with a fruit fly..

[joshchotiner]

"That's a hard but to crack" - come on, Hank! 😂😂😂

[mud]

This will be the first and last time I EVER thank a fruit fly………………

Thank you.

[lottieew]

I love how they, the scientists, called the Notch gene after notches in the wings! I've had a bit of a scary time, wondering if my Notch3 gene test came back as normal, because if it didn't, it was likely that I had Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Artereopathy with Subcortical Infarct Leucoencephalopathy (aka CADASIL), and my mum & deadbeat father would have to have a test to see who passed on the faulty gene. Thank god I'm not that broken, my immune system just likes to royally attack the myelin sheaths on my neurons. I have come to terms with the diagnosis I got of MS, and I am happy my husband-to-be is just as cool with helping me with every new symptom or relapse 🤷‍♀️💓

[gerrimilner]

loved experimenting on these little guys, loved this vid. at uni some students delibratly released there experimental ones, so that around the uni there were many variations, the staff confiscated our flys and euthenised them themselves by the time we were there so we couldent free them into the local population

[J.A.huscher]

A few days ago I saw you in a video used in my psychology class. I didn't know you did other stuff other than what's on SciShow so that is cool.
I think it was on the CrashCourse channel thing where you talked about the scientific method in psychology

[dan]

Controversial take: the space fly research also need to make a giant flightless variant. So I can raise my little space puppy from a maggot when I get to space.