SEX, FLIES AND VIDEOTAPE

摘要

Science has taken an important step forward in the effort to expose the genetic underpinnings of sexual predilection—in fruit flies. A group led by Michael McKeown of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., has found that a single mutant gene, called dissatisfaction, makes female flies too choosy and male flies not choosy enough. Previous research had shown that females carrying dissatisfaction never lay eggs, but the precise causes of the infertility remained unknown. McKeown and his three colleagues put the mutant females in transparent chambers with normal males and videotaped their shenanigans. Normal females copulate after several minutes of male courtship, which includes poking, licking and vibrating a wing—or "singing," as the investigators describe it in the February 4 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.