NIGHT FLIGHT: A scanning electron micrograph of a Dark-fly DrosophilaNAOYUKI FUSE
Every couple of weeks, Naoyuki Fuse steps into a darkroom carrying a handful of milk bottles. In the reddish gloom, he transfers the contents of existing bottles into the new ones he’s brought in, one after the other, until all the old bottles are empty. He’s been doing this for eight years now—for the previous five decades, it was someone else’s job. But carrying out this chore regularly and carefully is critical for the bottles’ contents: members of a population of very special fruit flies that have spent the last 62 years evolving in the dark.
“It’s tough work, especially over a long time,” admits Fuse, a molecular developmental biologist who’s part of an ongoing project at Kyoto University using these flies to identify genes ...
