The mysterious dance of cricket embryos
In June, 100 fruit fly scientists gathered on the Greek island of Crete for their biennial meeting. Among them was Cassandra Extavour, a Canadian geneticist at Harvard University. His laboratory works with fruit flies to study evolution and development - "evo devo". Most often, these scientists choose as a "model organism" the species Drosophila melanogaster - a winged workhorse that has served as an insect collaborator to at least a few Nobel Prizes in Physiology and Medicine.
But Dr. Extavour is also known to cultivate alternative species as model organisms. She is particularly fond of crickets, especially Gryllus bimaculatus, the two-spotted field cricket, although it does not yet like anything close to the fruit fly retinue. (Some 250 lead investigators had applied to attend the meeting in Crete.)
"It's crazy," she said in a video interview from her hotel room, as she walked away a beetle. "If we tried to have a meeting with all the lab managers working on this species of cricket, we could be five or ten."
Crickets have already been enrolled in studies on circadian clocks, limb regeneration, learning, memory; they served as disease models and pharmaceutical factories. True polymaths, crickets! They are also increasingly popular as foods, whether chocolate-coated or not. From an evolutionary perspective, crickets offer more opportunities to learn more about the last common ancestor of insects; they have more traits in common with other insects than fruit flies. (In particular, insects make up more than 85% of animal species).
In June, 100 fruit fly scientists gathered on the Greek island of Crete for their biennial meeting. Among them was Cassandra Extavour, a Canadian geneticist at Harvard University. His laboratory works with fruit flies to study evolution and development - "evo devo". Most often, these scientists choose as a "model organism" the species Drosophila melanogaster - a winged workhorse that has served as an insect collaborator to at least a few Nobel Prizes in Physiology and Medicine.
But Dr. Extavour is also known to cultivate alternative species as model organisms. She is particularly fond of crickets, especially Gryllus bimaculatus, the two-spotted field cricket, although it does not yet like anything close to the fruit fly retinue. (Some 250 lead investigators had applied to attend the meeting in Crete.)
"It's crazy," she said in a video interview from her hotel room, as she walked away a beetle. "If we tried to have a meeting with all the lab managers working on this species of cricket, we could be five or ten."
Crickets have already been enrolled in studies on circadian clocks, limb regeneration, learning, memory; they served as disease models and pharmaceutical factories. True polymaths, crickets! They are also increasingly popular as foods, whether chocolate-coated or not. From an evolutionary perspective, crickets offer more opportunities to learn more about the last common ancestor of insects; they have more traits in common with other insects than fruit flies. (In particular, insects make up more than 85% of animal species).
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