Question: how do you race fruit flies!?!

Tora Smulders-Srinivasan answered on 12 Nov 2014:

I study flies that have the same problems as people with Parkinson’s have, so they also have trouble moving. So the Parkinson’s flies don’t do very well in a climbing assay — race.

I put 8-12 of the type of flies I’m testing in 2 plastic test tubes stuck together with tape. I gently knock the flies to the bottom of the tubes.

In 10 seconds, only 1 or 2 of Parkinson’s flies out of 10 climb to the halfway point. For normal flies, 8 or 9 climb to the halfway point in 10 seconds.

So doing these races tells us about how well the flies move and probably is a good indicator of how many dead brain cells there are.

My experiments involve crossing in other defects with the Parkinson’s flies & I use the races to tell if these other defects in other proteins are involved with Parkinson’s.

Or I treat the Parkinson’s flies with new compounds my chemistry colleagues have made & see if the new compounds (drug possibilities!) can help the symptoms of the flies – do they climb better with the compounds!