Neurogeneticist Ward Odenwald was studying mutant drosophilas when he noticed that the males were acting out: instead of just courting females with their alluring dances and love songs, they were also courting one another. Last summer, after a year of research, Odenwald and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health identified the mutant gene responsible for their flies’ bisexuality--a red-eye-color gene, similar to a human gene with an unknown function. The popular press has anthropomorphized what we’ve done, trying to draw a straight line between our research and human sexuality, says Odenwald. Although you can’t do that, many basic mechanisms in life have been highly conserved from day one right on up to man. By understanding molecular mechanisms in the fly, scientists are gaining new insights into similar mechanisms that occur in man.
All fruit flies have the red-eye-color gene, but generally it’s turned on only in pigment-making cells ...
