HENRY

In today’s Current Biology Andreas Keller has a fascinating article on the scientific history of the fly, Drosophilia melanogaster:

When W.E. Castle at Harvard and T.H. Morgan at the Columbia University started using a tiny fly for laboratory experiments in genetics they were probably unaware that the species had only been introduced to the United States a few years earlier. Drosophila melanogaster, now a widely popular organism in biological research, is a human commensal that owes its current cosmopolitan distribution largely to human activity. Since this became clear considerable progress has been made in understanding the historical biogeography of Drosophila melanogaster and its association with human activities.

Continue reading Drosophila melanogaster’s history as a human commensal

Posted on February 6th, 2007 by Simon Greenhill