May 29, 2015 | animals helping humans
What is your chronotype? Are you a morning person or a night owl? Recent studies suggest that night owls may be predisposed to obesity as well as depression. Researchers at the University of Leicester in the UK have narrowed it down to eighty genes in the fruit fly that are very similar to humans. They […]
Jul 29, 2014 | animal research, animals helping humans
Mice, rats, rabbits, dogs, pigs, monkeys – and of course guinea pigs. These are the animals you typically think of when you think of medical miracles. Did you know, though, that so many other animals have given us some pretty amazing medical breakthroughs? Here’s just a few of them. In research circles, they’re often called […]
Feb 6, 2014 | archive, Conditions
Sleep deprived mutant flies. Sounds a little like a sci-fi horror movie from the 1950s, right? In fact, they’re very real! Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Pennsylvania, have identified a type of fruit fly with a genetic mutation that results in the flies being chronically sleep deprived. They identified this type by evaluating […]