Researchers Find Gene Critical To Sense Of Smell In Fruit Fly

Fruit flies don't have noses, but a huge part of their brains is dedicated to processing smells. Flies probably rely on the sense of smell more than any other sense for essential activities such as finding mates and avoiding danger. Researchers have discovered that a gene called distal-less is critical to the fly's ability to receive, process and respond to smells. The mushroom body is the major center in the fruit fly brain that processes olfactory information. The large structure is seen in green, while a subset of axons in the brain are red and dividing cells are blue.

Image credit: Jessica Plavicki and Grace Boekhoff-Falk, UW-Madison