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Short Stuff: Fruit Flies, Why? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh Clark,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's buzzing around out there somewhere.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, uh, and this is short stuff. Like I
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: think I said, yeah, the seats fly something that if
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: if you took high school biology, you talked about these
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: little fellows, the what fly, the CTS fly. I thought
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: we were talking about fruit flies. Isn't that the CTS fly?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. Is that different? Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I always thought that CTS fly was the same thing
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: as the fruit fly. Now no, because I think the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: tt C fly is that how you say it? Um
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: gives like passes around dangai fever. Oh well, just never mind, then, everybody,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: what we're really talking about is the fruit fly a
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: k a. The dress off ala. And it's impossible to
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: read this next word without reading it like like this, Uh,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Melano gangster, But it's not gangster, unfortunately, it's Milano Gaster. Yeah.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Most people call him Josaphila though. Oh I've always heard
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: droop now, oh man, I don't know now that you
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: say that. I've never heard it out loud. I've always
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: seen it in writing. So when you said most people
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: say it that way, you just lied. So what I
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: mean is, oh my gosh, yeah, I totally just did.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you for calling me out for that, just in
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the lying machine, apparently because I didn't realize that they're
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Milano gangsters no matter what. Okay, so we're talking, let's
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: just call him fruit flies. How about that flies? But
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: there is a bunch and by the way, t flies
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: are large biting fly, so there's definitely not these. Um.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Now we have to do a short stuff on those guys.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Thanks Chuck. Literally, uh, probably one eighth of the show
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: is now misinformation. So, um, fruit flies specifically, how did
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: you say it? Drosophila That's what I said. It's much
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: more beautiful than what I said, so I'm gonna go
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: with that too. You know, most people say Drosophila um.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Those particular kinds of fruit flies, Drosophila melang Melana gaster.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: They are um widely used in scientific experiments, and it
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: turns out it's a lot of people know that we
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: use fruit flies and experiments. They've actually bestowed a tremendous
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: amount of information to us humans um through their biology,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: through their genetics, through the very the very the very existence.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: We owe a great debt to them scientifically because a
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: lot of them have been asked to sacrifice their lives
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: in the for the furtherance of human knowledge. Yeah, and
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of reasons, which we're gonna get to
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: kind of here and there in a sec But you
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: dug up this kind of interesting bit from February v
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: two rocket full to the brim, well not full to
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the brim, but a lot of fruit flies were loaded
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: up on this thing, traveled sixty seven miles up into
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: the air, which is technically uh an altitude, which is
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: one mile into actual space according to NASA. And they
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: were the very first animals to go into space. Yeah,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and they actually survived that trip um and not one
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: of like they were the first animal and they were
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: they were like a test animal to see. Scientists were like, well,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: no one's ever been to space. We have no idea
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: what happens out there. Maybe these things are gonna come
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: back all mutated and everything. And when they didn't, when
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: they actually survived the flight and the re entry um,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: they said, oh, well, let's start sending more larger animals
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: up and they did, and eventually we ended up on
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: humans and that's what we're sending up these days. That's right.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: But it was very instructive to see those flies come
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: back without you know, seven eyeballs or or twice the
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: size or ten times the size they were. They were fine,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: they didn't hulk out. Yeah. And by that yeah, no
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: purple ripped pants to be found. Um by that time bye.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: They had actually been used in biological studies for well
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: over a decade UM. In the nineteen thirties, in particular,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: they basically helped establish the field of modern genetics. UM.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: A guy uh named um Morgan Thomas Hunt Morgan basically
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: showed that inheritance has passed along via chromosomes using a
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: fruit fly study, and he did it in months rather
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: than years that his other fellow early geneticists took to
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to prove their studies and actually end up winning a
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for it. And in fact, at least five
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: people have won Nobel Prizes from directly working with fruit flies. Yeah,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you want a Nobel prize, not a
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: bad place to start, that's right, Uh. And the reason why,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: or maybe we should take a break and then talk
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: about some of the reasons why, right, after this. Yes,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: all right. The reasons why fruit flies are really great
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: are multifold. One of the reasons if you're going to
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: study genetics, what you need to study is generations, and
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: fruit flies are really quick. They can create a new
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: generation in about two weeks, so that means you can
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: study generation after generation in short order. Uh. They are
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: very easy to breed in the lab. Um, they're small,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: they don't put up much of a fussy, easy to
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: care for. Yeah, they just want a little cornstarch and
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: sugar soup and they're happy. Yeah little fruit maybe yeah, um, yeah,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: you don't even have to give them fruit. That's really
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: corn Starch and sugar soup is fine with them. But yeah, ultimately,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they prefer the real deal, you know. But
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: if they're being raised in a lab their entire life
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and countless generations that they of their lineage before them
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: have been raised in a lab, they'll take the corn
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: starch and sugar soup if that's all they can get. Right.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: But why, why, my friend, if you're going to study
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: human genetics, would would you even bother looking at a
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: fruit fly? Well that's a great question, Chuck, And the
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: answer to it is that we share a surprising number
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: of genes with fruit flies. Um. Apparently eight thousand of
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: our twenty thousand to twenty five thousand genes are analogous
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: to fruit fly genes. Yeah, so if you study those
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: genes and fruit flies, you can extrapolate to humans. You know,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: what they do, what happens when you poke them with
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: a whatever, Um, what happens if you shine a light
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: on them, if you're doing an optogenetic study. Um. That
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of questions that we've answered through genetics
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: because of that benefit of having similar genes. And apparently
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: sev of the genes known to cause diseases in humans
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: are are are shared between humans and fruit flies too.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: It's so cool. Another cool thing you can do if
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: you want to say, oh, I don't know, Like, what
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: if you live in the Arctic and you're always or
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: the greater northern climates of Canada and you're just basically
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: cold all the time. What is that going to do
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: to your gene activity in your metabolism. Well, let's put
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: two thousand fruit flies in a in a chamber and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: make it super cold all the time and look at
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: them and see what happens. You can get a large
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: population study very very easily because these little fellas are
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: so tiny. Yeah. They also share, in addition to genes,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of the same biochemical pathways that humans have
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: to UM. One example I saw is that they don't
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: actually get Alzheimer's, but they have all of the same
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: pathways and and brain structures that Alzheimer's um befalls in humans.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: So we can study those pathways and try to treat
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Alzheimer's just by looking at UM these these pathways and
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: these brain structures in fruit flies. Yeah. I also thought
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: it was funny when you look at the downside of
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: fruit flies. Aside from just some of the genetic components,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the biggest downside, it seems like, is that their fruit
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: flies and fruit flies are super annoying. They really are
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: very annoying. Um there apparently what's called cosmopolitan species. So
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: wherever humans are, they're going to be there too. And
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the reason why is apparently because we live in conditions
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: that they find very suitable, like moderate temperatures that are
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: fairly stable, and we like fruit too, and sometimes we
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: leave our fruit out and it gets a little past ripe,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and the fruit flies say thank you, sir or madam
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: they doff their little top hat, um, click their heels
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: together with their spats, and they go to town on
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: that juicy banana, which I guess if you have a
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: juicy banana you want to throw that now. Yeah, but
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: did you see that listener mail by the way, about
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: the banana bread banana. Someone emailed about something you said,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and I said that I think one of the big
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: reasons too, is because they get really really sweet. Mh
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: is why you want to use an old banana. But anyway,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: the fruit flies love all that stuff. So if you
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: live near a dumpster, unfortunately for you, which I did
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: in my apartment in Los Angeles, had a dumpster behind
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: my apartment, which is where I found my cat Luran,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: by the way, it wasn't all that Or if you compost,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: God help you. Um it's a great thing to do.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: But you're going to be dealing with some fruit flies,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you are. And again, I mean, there's really not a
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: lot besides annoyance that fruit flies vide humans like. They
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: don't transfer or transmit communicable diseases and not a disease vector.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: And on the on the flip side of that, they've
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: actually stood in as models for um disease carrying insects,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Like we know a lot about how mosquitoes transmit disease
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: by studying fruit flies as models. So they basically annoy us.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: But they've furthered our, understanding and medicine in countless ways.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And yet we're still like, yeah, but they're annoying, you
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Yeah, you know that's so human
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: it is. But they're not like that rat, the c
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: fly now dan gay fever spreading mofo uh. And apparently
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: if you you know, if you do compost like inside
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: and you have a even if you have a thing
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: with the lid, they're gonna gather around. You can set
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: up a little little vinegar jar like a canning jar
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: with vinegar at the bottom, uh, and then a top
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: made of plastic wrap with some holes in there, and
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: you can trap them and even remove them safely. I
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: think if you want, yeah, just throw them out in
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the yard and say, go find a juicy banana because
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: I don't want it. Although it is true you can
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: use those for banana bread. I forgot. Yeah, so fruit
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: flyes ahoy. The next time you see a fruit fly,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: don't swat at it, say thank you fruit fly. Your
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: kind has been very beneficent to my kind and I
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: appreciate it. That's right and said since Chuck said that's
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: right and tapped his watch, Short Stuff is out. Stuff
• 11:35
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• 11:37
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