Sarah Palin – Antiscience

There were many reasons to question Sarah Palin as the choice of potential vice-president for John McCain but one of the more disturbing moments came when Palin questioned the value of work done on fruit flies “in Paris, France.”

Fruit flies, scientific name Drosophila melanogaster, are arguably the most useful model organism that a geneticist has access to. The fully sequenced genome is publicly available at http://flybase.org ready to be searched and compared with newly isolated genes in other species. When a match is found it can give a researcher a head start in discovering the likely function of their new gene. Approximately three quarters of human disease genes show homology to coding regions in the fruit fly genome. This has made Drosophila useful as a model for diseases like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s. Do we really want to end funding for important research areas such as these?

Incredible scientific advancements have been made using Drosophila, these include:

· The first mutation – white eye

· Proving that genes were located on chromosomes

· The discovery of polytene chromosomes

· Elucidation of the receptor tyrosine kinase pathway – important for growth signals and in cancer

· Drosophila was the second multi-cellular organism to have its genome sequenced.

This is to name only a few. Drosophila also provides an outlet for the biologist’s sense of humour. Mutant flies are often named after the phenotype that they display. For example, the cheap date mutant is especially sensitive to alcohol whilst the tin-man mutant fails to develop a heart.

Research into genetics, development, and disease will continue in this amazing model organism, even in “Paris, France” whether Sarah Palin thinks it benefits the public good or not. Thankfully, Palin will not be entering the White House let’s hope she fades to obscurity with…

~A Puff of Logic~

(Notes: image retreived from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster)