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John Hollenhorst ReportingResearchers at the University of Utah have discovered some remarkable things about you, by studying of all things, fruit flies! They're learning about something you may never have thought about: how does your body protect itself from poisons that are around us every day?
It happens when you're walking down the street, breathing polluted air, or when you're eating something with hazardous chemicals. Every day, your body fights off poisons.
Dr. Carl Thummel, University of Utah: "If we didn't have this response, it would be catastrophic."
Genetics expert Carl Thummell says that mysterious detoxification process goes on, even when we ingest something that's good for us, in limited doses.
Dr. Carl Thummel: "Whenever you take a prescription or over-the-counter drug like Tylenol, for instance, it only last four to six hours. Everybody knows that. And the reason why is because it's being detoxified."
In their lab, they've been trying to figure out how the process works. They use wiggly, crawly critters as stand-ins for humans -- fruit flies in various stages of development.
Dr. Robert Beckstead, Researcher: "Right in here are all these little maggots, that are right here chewing in this food."
They've fed the flies pesticides and even a drug, phenobarbitol. They've found that the flies respond dramatically to a toxic threat at the genetic level. As many as a thousand genes, a fifteenth of all the genes a fruit fly has, will switch off or on.
Dr. Carl Thummel: "When one of these genes switches on, it makes a new protein in the cell. That protein will take one of these toxic compounds and make it more soluble in water."
The attack by the genes helps flush the poison out of the body.
Dr. Carl Thummel: "We learned what those genes are, how many of them there are, and what they do. It surprised us that there were so many."
The research could lead to better insecticides and pharmaceuticals. And it could lead to a better understanding of how drugs interact with each other in the human body.
Fruit flies work as test subjects because they're a lot like humans and all other animals. Their genes evolved to insure survival of the species.
The findings were just published in "Cell Metabolism" journal. The work is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
