What happens in the fruit fly’s tiny brain?  What miniature gears and levers allow the fly, or any animal, to sense its environment, process information, and control its movements?  Curiosity about the biological machinery of the nervous system is what propels the research in the Ganter Institute.

 

The G.I. uses fruit flies to study the genetic and cellular basis of behavior.  We are currently focusing on the ecdysone steroid hormone system.  One result we have observed is that the ecdysone system seems to be one of the tiny gears that controls how a male fly behaves toward other male flies.

 

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