Fruit Fly
Restrict calories in fruit flies, and they live 50% longer - from 40 days to 60.
Restrict calories in fruit flies, and they live 50% longer - from 40 days to 60. Feed them rapamycin (an mTOR inhibitor), and lifespan extends 10-15%. The same molecular pathways that regulate aging in yeast work in flies, separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. This conservation reveals something fundamental: longevity mechanisms aren't species-specific tweaks - they're core cellular programs that evolution discovered once and reused everywhere.
But fruit flies are most famous for revealing how bodies are built. They have 8 Hox genes that specify positional identity along the head-to-tail axis, determining which segment becomes what. The Antennapedia mutation demonstrates the power of this modular system: a misexpressed Hox gene causes legs to grow where antennae should be. The leg module itself is intact and functional - it's just executing in the wrong location. This is developmental modularity: complex programs that can be called from different contexts without modification.
The engineering principle is profound: Well-designed modules don't know where they're being used. Fruit fly developmental programs demonstrate that the most reusable components are those with clear interfaces and no context-dependence. The leg-building module doesn't ask 'am I supposed to be here?' - it just builds a leg. Microservices architecture rediscovered what evolution knew 500 million years ago.
Notable Traits of Fruit Fly
- 50% longer lifespan with caloric restriction
- 40 days → 60 days lifespan extension
- Rapamycin extends lifespan 10-15%
- Hox gene model organism
- Antennapedia mutation
- 8 Hox genes
Fruit Fly Appears in 2 Chapters
Fruit flies demonstrate 50% longer lifespan with caloric restriction and 10-15% extension with rapamycin, showing conserved longevity pathways across vastly different species.
How conserved aging mechanisms work →Fruit flies exemplify Hox gene developmental modularity, where the Antennapedia mutation causes legs to grow in place of antennae by executing the leg module in the wrong location.
How modular development programs work →