Diabetes in flies

According to diabetes news today, results from a three-year experiment studying the fruit fly may yield results that could be applied to humans. The diabetes experts have removed genes from fruit flies to create insects the demonstrate human symptoms of diabetes .
The diabetes research, although seemingly removed from human application, could yield crucial information about the genetic causes of diabetes and developing diabetes treatments . The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
Professor Leslie Pick reportedly commented: “We didn’t really know what we’d see. But if we did find things that were very similar, we could say these flies were diabetic .” The results are apparently encouraging. Pick was reported as saying: “These results are proof of principle — we can get diabetic flies. Then we can start to think about using the flies to look at new genes and interactions that could modulate diabetes.”