Decapitated, Laser-Reanimated Zombie Flies
Okay, now just bear with me a minute here and try to focus...
Boing Boing (my favorite blog) reported yesterday that the new issue of Cell (the Journal of Experimental Biology) includes a fascinating and rather disturbing article by Susana Q. Lima and Gero Miesenböck entitled "Remote Control of Behavior through Genetically Targeted Photostimulation of Neurons". Basically, it describes how with genetically encoded "phototriggers", particular neurons in Drosophila (flies) can be made light-addressable - meaning they can be activated remotely with targeted light (i.e. lasers), thus revealing the connection between specific neurons and specific actions (such as jumping and even flight). Potentially, this provides a method to map neural networks, and could even lead to neural prosthetics.
But you know what it really means? That we can now make decapitated flies fly by shooting lasers at them, and then post video of it on the internet. Science is fun!
posted by Paul at 11:23 PM [Permalink]
1 Comments:
You know, we do this sort of thing all the time (well, without the lasers) in our lab. If you gas drosophila, snick their heads off cleanly and then let them wake up, they'll act like fruit flies with heads for quite a while. If you tickle the little hairs on their bodies, they'll groom. Push them, and they'll push back and right themselves if they fall over.
Also, we're in seriously deep shit if God is a dipteran...
-Adrienne
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