In a world first, scientists at the University of Utah have engineered fruit flies susceptible to cocaine addiction.
But as strange as it sounds, there are potentially life-saving reasons for genetically altering the insects to crave the drug.
As surprising as it may sound, humans have a lot in common with fruit flies.
Researchers have relied on the insects for genetic studies for years, especially for investigating the biological roots of certain addictions like cocaine abuse.
“Flies don’t like cocaine one bit,” Adrian Rothenfluh, the study’s senior author and an associate professor of psychiatry, said in a statement.
After confirming that cocaine activates a fruit fly’s bitter-sensing taste receptors, Rothenfluh and Philyaw switched off those nerves.
Now that researchers know how to breed the modified fruit flies, they can more easily study how cocaine addiction evolves in the body. »