Post-Sex Fruit Fly Gene Activity Studied

U.S. and Israeli scientists say after fruit flies mate, sperm and male proteins in the female causes a cascade of heretofore unknown gene activity.

Evolutionary and developmental biologists at the University of Georgia and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Researchers say they hope understanding how that works will give them new insights into reproduction, as well as providing methods to safely control the spread of insect pests.

We have been able to define a large number of mating-responsive genes that are activated in Drosophila, said Michael Bender, a developmental biologist in the department of genetics at the University of Georgia. There is a lot of potential in this work for uncovering basic aspects of reproductive biology that will be useful in pest-control approaches.

The research — a collaborative effort of Bender, Paul Mack of the University of Georgia, Yael Heifetz of Hebrew University and Anat Kapelnikov, a graduate student in the Heifetz lab — appears in the on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.