Why it matters that scientists modified a ‘sexual’ fruit fly to be asexual Premium

Decades of research on fruit flies led to a groundbreaking discovery of parthenogenetic asexual reproduction in Drosophila species.

The fruit-fly (Drosophila melanogaster) has been among the favourite organisms of genetics researchers for more than a hundred years. Many years of intense research with these diminutive creatures have led to many breakthroughs in our understanding of biology and evolution.

Recently, researchers from Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology reported yet another such breakthrough. They were able to ‘engineer’ a sexually reproducing fruit-fly species to reproduce asexually, demonstrating the profound biological consequences of relatively minor genetic manipulation.

The first study that reported this significant feat was published in July 2023; a follow-up study to it was published in the February 2024 issue of Heredity.

How was an organism that usually reproduces sexually turned into one that could reproduce asexually?

Fatherless reproduction is known as parthenogenesis.

Earlier, other researchers had collected fruit-fly-like specimens from diverse geographies and compared them in different ways with the canonical specimen and with each other, to gauge the extent of their natural diversity. The collection represented more than 1,600 Drosophila species.

Of these, one species, Drosophila mangebeirai, was found to consist only of females. The eggs produced by isolated females developed directly into female progeny without having to be fertilised by sperm from a male.