Quote:
Originally Posted by tedmic
How does one know if fruit flies have Alzheimer's disease? Do they fly in erratic patterns?
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Davis chairs the Department of Neuroscience at Scripps Florida. He's designed an experiment in which fruit flies are trained to remember an odor associated with an unpleasant electrical shock.
Dr. Ron Davis says fruit flies have essentially the same genes as humans do, just fewer of them.
It involves a series of Plexiglas tubes which have an electrifiable copper grid on their surfaces. "One puts the fly in these tubes first, passes an odor through the tube," Davis says. "Odor A shocks the animal, mild electric shock." After fresh air has been blown through the tubes to remove any trace of the first odor, a second scent is pumped in.
"Odor B passes through the tube and the animals are not shocked. That's the training where we're hoping the animals will develop an association. They'll learn that one odor is bad because it's been punished in the presence of that odor. And the other odor is okay."
Then, the flies are tested to see how well they remember which odor is which. Davis says about 90 percent do, and avoid the electric shock. The ones that don't are isolated, so their genes can be studied.
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