The tiny fruit fly, one of the most popular model organisms in science, lives fast and dies at about 50 days old. But this brief life is anything but unremarkable. The fly fills its days with intricate routines and schemes—and, on occasion, romance. To better understand how such a minuscule brain can power these complex behaviors, scientists have already created a connectome, a virtual “map” showing the links between each of the fruit fly’s 200,000 neurons.
And now they’ve built a body.
Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI’s) Janelia Research Campus in Virginia and Google DeepMind recently designed a virtual fruit fly that looks and moves like the real thing, making it easier for scientists to observe this favorite research animal’s surprisingly nuanced habits and movements.
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