{"id":34794,"date":"2018-10-31T13:21:27","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T07:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=34794"},"modified":"2018-10-31T13:21:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T07:51:27","slug":"drosophila-melanogaster-the-story-of-the-little-pest-and-the-famed-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/drosophila-melanogaster-the-story-of-the-little-pest-and-the-famed-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Drosophila melanogaster: The story of the little pest and the famed prize:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/drosophila-melanogaster-the-story-of-the-little-pest-and-the-famed-nobel-prize-in-physiology-or-medicine-4873184\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drosophila melanogaster: The story of the little pest and the famed prize<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nobel Prize for medicine awarded for insights into internal biological clock.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Introduction:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 108th Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to a trio of American scientists for their discoveries on the molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> prize shared between American scientists Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young for work on the internal clock of living organisms<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Area of discovery:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The team identified a gene within fruit flies that controls the creatures\u2019 daily rhythm, known as the \u201cperiod\u201d gene. This gene encodes a protein within the cell during the night which then degrades during the day.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The team\u2019s discoveries also helped to explain the mechanism by which light can synchronise the clock.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The work was important for the basic understanding of life.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 2017 Prize underlines the continuing importance of Drosophila in the world of genetics and the Nobel.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Drosophila:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drosophila melanogaster is a prolific breeder and has a short generation time, and that its genome has just four pairs of chromosomes.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Why do scientists investigate flies?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After the genome was sequenced in 2000, it was found that an astounding 60% of fruit fly genes are also present in humans in a similar form.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Germany\u2019s Max Planck Society says that \u201caround 75% of the genes which are known to cause illnesses in humans also occur in flies, and Drosophila possesses more than 90% of the genes that can trigger cancer in humans.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scientists worked to create disease-free organisms (eugenics).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was discovered that it was easy to modify the fruit fly genome to understand how genotype alters phenotype.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Significance of research in this field:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Research on the body clock has helped scientists improve health. Many drugs now on the market work best when taken at the right time. The cholesterol-cutting drug Mevacor, for example, is taken at night because levels of the enzyme it targets are highest then. The same is true for low-dose aspirin used to reduce blood pressure.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Previous prize winners:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Herman Muller, won the 1946 Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that the fruit fly gene could be altered by radiation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">George W Beadle who, along with Edward L Tatum won one half of the 1958 Prize for their discovery that genes act by regulating definite chemical events.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1995, three development biologists, Edward B Lewis, Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Eric F Wieschaus, won the Prize for discovering the role of key genes in the development of the fruit fly embryo that also plays a crucial role in human embryonic development.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last year the prize was won by \u00a0Yoshinori Ohsumi<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a Japanese cell biologist who unpicked the mechanisms by which the body break downs and recycles components of cells \u2013 a process that guards against various diseases, including cancer and diabetes.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Drosophila melanogaster: The story of the little pest and the famed prize: Context: Nobel Prize for medicine awarded for insights into internal biological clock. Introduction: The 108th Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to a trio of American scientists for their discoveries on the molecular mechanisms controlling circadian rhythms. The prize shared&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/drosophila-melanogaster-the-story-of-the-little-pest-and-the-famed-prize\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Drosophila melanogaster: The story of the little pest and the famed prize:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704901928},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}