Hardly any organism like the black-bellied fruit fly has been thoroughly researched Drosophila black belly. In the first half of the last century, this was a favorite of geneticists: only four pairs of chromosomes, easy to grow in bottles, easy to cross – the perfect laboratory organism.
Recently, the small flying insect has been used primarily as a tried and tested model for behavioral experiments. On the one hand, there is a great genetic similarity between him and us, regardless of evolutionary distance, on the other hand, it does not fall under the animal welfare law. Flies love to feast on fish and amphibians alive, so they can undergo tests without remorse, which would vex as animal cruelty in higher organisms.
For example, a team led by neurobiologist Roland Strauss of the University of Mainz trapped groups of fruit flies together in narrow glass tubes and subjected them to high-frequency vibrations for several days. Next, the researchers created a case in test animals, and that’s what they did Compare human depression in their 2017 publications. Insects ceased to climb the glass walls, they were completely passive. In addition, despite the starvation of the flies, he lost all interest in the sweets that they greedily eat.
But that’s not all: once the stressed insects were given the antidepressant lithium chloride, which is commonly used in humans, their behavior returned to normal again; If they accidentally overdosed, they fell into insane hyperactivity. As the researchers note, such experiments may help clarify the still-mysterious mechanism of action of lithium in people with depression.
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