Fly: The Unsung Hero in the History of Genetics

This is the best science writing I've read in a long time. Martin Brookes does an amazing job of weaving together the history and science behind the fruit fly and making it incredibly interesting. The fruit fly has been a key player in the advancement of evolutionary biology, genetics, and developmental biology during the past century. Brookes manages to follow the story of the fruit fly from lab to lab, telling jokes and interesting anecdotes along the way. By the end of the book, the reader is convinced that the seemingly uninportant and pesky fruit fly is not only irreplacable in science, but can somehow tell us something about our own lives. I highly recommend this book not only to scientists and science students, but to the layperson who wants to learn some basic biology and some scientific history.

This is the very interesting history of the research of genetics, evolution, and biology using the very versatile tool Drosophilia melanogaster. However, it is written for a non-scientific audience. There are numerous puns and jokes about the humble fruit fly and the explanation of genes and alleles is reduced to an analogy of shoes on people's feet. This may help people who have absolutly no science background understand the subject, but I found the poor analogies to be distracting.On the other hand, the history was absorbing. How were maps of genes created before fancy sequencing machines? The answer lies in the close study of thousands of generations of fruit flys and studying their mutations. Many discoveries of basic genes that are present in all life forms are first found in the fruit fly. Many more discoveries are yet to be made.

The book's an excellent read for both the layman and the science student. It successfully combines historical detail with contemporary implications of Drosophila research. Written in a breezy colloquial manner, it never gets boring while sacrificing only little of the scientific content. The author does abuse the fly sex theme, often resorting to it with specious warrant. The other shortcoming of the book has to do with its physical quality, which is horrible. Seedy five-buck pocket-size thrillers are printed on paper of incomparably higher quality. Judged on the content, though - a well-written, informative, and entertaining book.

In biology labs across the world, fruit flies are turning up answers to some of the basic questions of life. From genetics to development, behavior to aging, and evolution to the origin of species, the fruit fly has been has played the dimunitive guinea pig for some of the 20th century's greatest biological discoveries. Techniques to pinpoint genes that play a role in human disease depend on genetic mapmaking principles first established with the fly. It was experiments on fruit flies that opened our eyes to the dangers of radiation to human health. In fact, everything from gene therapy to cloning to the Human Genome Project is built on the foundation of fruit fly research. In highly original, witty, and irreverent style, Brookes takes readers through the successive stages in the life cycle of the fly, each illustrating an important concept in biology. Some, such as the fundamentals of heredity, are well established; others, such as sexual warfare, learning, and memory, are still in their infancy. But whether flies are getting high on crack cocaine, enjoying the pleasures and pains of a boozy night out, being trained by punishment and reward, or struggling with insomnia, this book provides a glimpse of how one short life has informed almost every aspect of human existence. Much more intriguing, edifying, and entertaining than you'd imagine.

The author writes with a light touch, poking fun at himself, making fruit fly sex jokes, and describing the tortured trials of the fruit fly (my favorite is his depiction of drunken fruit flies too soused to fly!). The book is designed to be comprehensible to all. It's a light overview of the evolution of biological thought in the 20th century, through a framework of how fruit fly research pushed biological thought forward. He brings in the stories of assorted fruit fly researchers, and how genetics plugged the holes in the theory of evolution. He writes of fruit fly experiments that taught scientists how man's internal clocks work, how man learns, how man ages. He doesn't bog down the explanations with loads of technicalia, but one comes out feeling enlightened. I found his explanation of genetics a touch strained (he was trying to keep it light and non-textbook-y), but overall I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Plus the fruit fly experiments described in there are utterly fascinating and make great conversation topics.