After their first snifter, they get a little hyperactive. A little bit more, and they start to stagger. Eventually, given enough to drink, they fall over and can’t get back up.
Sound familiar?
It does to Anita Devineni at the University of California, San Francisco, who has been looking at alcohol preferences—not in humans, but in Drosophila. In the process, she has developed a method that may help uncover the molecular mechanisms of alcohol addiction and dependence.
Watching flies fall over for a living sounds like a cushy number, but Devineni says you soon get used to it. “Sometimes they start fighting,” she says. “When I do the acute intoxication assay, I’ve got flies passed out on the table. And then they recover and start stumbling around.” They also tend to escape, and get into the lunchroom. “Neighboring labs aren’t always happy about that!”
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