When a young gene known as sphinx is inactivated in the common fruit fly, it leads to increased male-male courtship, scientists report in the May 27, 2008, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. High levels of male-male courtship are widespread in many fly species, but not in Drosophila melanogaster, the tiny insect that has been a mainstay of genetic research for more than a century.

In 2002, the research team of Manyuan Long, professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, and colleagues discovered that D. melanogaster possessed the sphinx gene--and other fly species did not.

In order to study the function of this two million-year-old gene, Hongzheng Dai and Ying Chen--former graduate students in Long's lab and first authors of this study--created flies with a suppressed version of the sphinx gene, which is expressed in male reproductive glands. Loss of the gene produced no apparent changes.   Read More...