Drosophila Melanogastronaut

Dr Erica McAlister examines the innocuous flies that are Drosophila melanogaster.

They’d be content to spend life doing nothing much more than hovering around a pile of rotting apples and getting drunk.

But we now know more about these flies than any other animal on the planet, as a model for human biology and genetics - on earth and now in space.

Series looking at some of the entomological pioneers, whose groundbreaking observations and experiments have led to some truly innovative developments.

With contributions from::

* Behavioural geneticist Professor Matthew Cobb, University of Manchester;
* Dr Stephanie Mohr, Harvard University and author of First in Fly
* Sharmila Bhattacharya, NASA's chief scientist for Space Biology

Producer: Adrian Washbourne

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2021.