From breakthrough discoveries on ALS to long-COVID, research on fruit flies has been making the headlines in Malta. Although for many, flies are an annoyance, for scientists these creatures are the ideal test subjects for understanding and treating a wide spectrum of human diseases.

Even though, at face value, they do not look like us, flies can be considered as miniature versions of ourselves. That is because for over more than a century, flies have been intensely observed and investigated in the laboratory, and we have learnt that what happens in their tiny bodies closely mirrors what happens in ours.

Considering that more than two-thirds of human disease genes are also found in flies, these bugs offer a superb opportunity to gain valuable new insights into what happens when we get sick with conditions that are as yet untreatable.

ALS is a neurological condition that typically strikes at mid-age and affects the nerve cells (motor neurons) that control the muscles that we use to walk, talk, eat and breathe. In addition to being notoriously difficult to diagnose, effective treatments for ALS have eluded scientists.

One chief reason is that ALS is a complex disease that can result from multiple factors including flaws in different genes. Finding a medicine that targets the cause of ALS in a broad swathe of patients has been challenging. The near future will see us treating ALS through therapies that are tailor-made for individual patients and that, therefore, target the precise cause of the disease.

These bugs offer a superb opportunity to gain valuable new insights into what happens when we get sick with conditions that are as yet untreatable

Centuries of genetic insularity due to our obvious geographical isolation have shaped the Maltese gene pool in such a way that the major genes that trigger ALS in Malta are different than those reported for other European populations. Because our major ALS genes are infrequently damaged in European ALS patients, they remain a low priority for development of treatments that will be mostly beneficial to Maltese ALS patients.

And that is why, in my laboratory, a vibrant team of energetic researchers are vigorously pursuing research to better understand the role of these genes in health and sickness. Through genetic engineering technologies we are creating flies that mimic Maltese ALS patients.

Fruit flies offer experimental possibilities that one cannot achieve on human samples, considering that our brains are inaccessible when we are still alive. Studying how the brains of ALS flies differ from those of their healthy counterparts offers key molecular insights that researchers can use to develop therapies that specifically target Maltese ALS patients.

Ruben J. Cauchi is an associate professor of neurogenetics at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malta, and heads the University of Malta’s Motor Neuron Disease Lab. Project majorALS, led by Cauchi, is funded by the Malta Council for Science & Technology Research Excellence Programme.

Sound Bites

•        Scientists from the University of Cambridge have succeeded in triggering ‘virgin birth’ in female flies that normally need a male partner to reproduce. To do so, they made use of genetic engineering technology, altering several genes in a go until they stumbled upon the perfect combination.

•        University of Michigan researchers found that the sight of their dead comrades is enough to trigger early death in flies, possibly because flies enter a depressive-like state. Understanding the brain of these flies can benefit people that are routinely surrounded by death including healthcare workers.

For more soundbites, listen to Radio Mocha www.fb.com/RadioMochaMalta/.

DID YOU KNOW?

•        Eight Nobel Prizes have been awarded to scientists for research using fruit flies. The last award was given in 2017 for fly research that revealed the workings of the body’s internal clock.

•        Fruit flies live and die quickly. In the lab, fruit flies can therefore live up to 80 days. So one fly day is equivalent to one human year. The brief lives of fruit flies make them ideal to study diseases of ageing.

•        Fly scientists have the privilege to name the genes they discover. Interesting names include Ken and Barbie, Van Gogh, sugar babe, Pavarotti, as well as our own Valette and Gaulos. Every name is given for a reason and it mostly has to do with what the gene does.

For more trivia see: www.um.edu.mt/think.