Morgan and his students used the fly to make some very interesting findings. For example, they proved that genes lay on chromosomes, and thus were the founders of modern genetics. Morgan also obtained a Nobel prize for his work. And this was only the first of so far 6 Nobel prizes that were awarded for research on fruit flies. Do you want to know more? Here you can find a list of reasons that make the fly such a great study subject! And here you can play a game about fly genetics!

For our research, too, the fly is a wonderful study case. The adult fly has only 100,000 nerve cells, the larval stage has even only 10,000. Humans, in contrast, have 70 billion! Because of this relatively small number, researchers have accomplished an incredible task: by the use of Electron Microscopes, powerful computer algorithms and a lot of work, they completed to reconstruct every single nerve cell and every connection between them (so-called synapses) in the larva and the fly brain. This means we know for every nerve cell in the fly brain to which other nerve cells it is talking to! Here you find some further information about this astonishing project.

Although the fly brain is so much smaller than the human brain, many things are the same: the way how nerve cells communicate to each other, for example, is the same in every animal on Earth. Also, the senses (smell, taste, vision and so on) work very similar in different animals. So, although there are differences, if we can understand how fly brains work, we can also understand something about our own brains.

There is one last important reason that make flies so great study objects: a special method that allows scientists to manipulate their genes very easily. You will learn more about this method on the next page.