Forget dogs. The lowly fruit fly is really man’s best friend. At least when it comes to helping researchers fight the threat of the world’s next flu pandemic.
The top flu researchers in the world depend on fruit flies for their experiments, and this week several of them at the UW-Madison have announced a breakthrough that will help drug companies target new therapies.
By injecting fly cells with a modified flu virus, a team of researchers led by UW virologists Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Paul Ahlquist were able to pinpoint which of the fly cells’ 13,000 genes were most vulnerable.