Why do scientists investigate flies? Outwardly, fruit flies and humans have little in common. It is all the more astonishing that roughly 60 percent of the fly's genes can also be found in humans in a similar form.
We've long known that we're closely related to chimpanzees and other primates, but did you know that humans also share more than half of our genetic material with chickens, fruit flies, and bananas?
That's right, 60% of the DNA code of fruit flies and humans is identical. That means that most human genes and insect genes are the same and function very similarly.
Genetically speaking, people and fruit flies are surprisingly alike, explains biologist Sharmila Bhattacharya of NASA's Ames Research Center. "About 61% of known human disease genes have a recognizable match in the genetic code of fruit flies, and 50% of fly protein sequences have mammalian analogues."
Back to the question on similarity between humans and bananas - overall, the vast majority of human DNA is very different to bananas. However, if you just look at the 2% of DNA corresponding to protein-coding genes, there is a pretty high degree of similarity between them; which is where the 50% comes from.
And, it turns out; the fish are a lot like people. Humans and zebrafish share 70 percent of the same genes and 84 percent of human genes known to be associated with human disease have a counterpart in zebrafish.
More startling is an even newer discovery: we share 99% of our DNA with lettuce. This could have startling philosophical, scientific and medical implications.
For each person on earth, there are 17 million flies. They pollinate plants, consume decomposing bodies, eat the sludge in your drainpipes, damage crops, spread disease, kill spiders, hunt dragonflies.
But why does the housefly love you and your home? Houseflies LOVE the scent of food, garbage, feces, and other smelly things like your pet's food bowl. They're also attracted to your body if you have a layer of natural oils and salt or dead skin cells built up.
Chimpanzees are our closest relative as a species and we share at least 98% of our genome with them. Our feline friends share 90% of homologous genes with us, with dogs it is 82%, 80% with cows, 69% with rats and 67% with mice [1].
Cats. You probably thought dogs were a little closer on the evolutionary scale, since they're supposedly our best friends. It turns out that cats actually share 90 percent of our genes.
It's probably not that surprising to learn that humans share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees–but incredibly, we also share 70% with slugs and 50% with bananas.
For the first time ever, a group of researchers has sequenced the genome of the spider. This knowledge provides a much more qualified basis for studying features of the spider. It also shows that humans share certain genomic similarities with spiders.
“Banana: more than 60 percent identical. Many of the “housekeeping” genes that are necessary for basic cellular function, such as for replicating DNA, controlling the cell cycle, and helping cells divide are shared between many plants (including bananas) and animals.”
Ever since researchers sequenced the chimp genome in 2005, they have known that humans share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, making them our closest living relatives.
All human beings are 99.9 percent identical in their genetic makeup. Differences in the remaining 0.1 percent hold important clues about the causes of diseases.
Flies have a little brain, which is perfect for research since it is simple enough, but yet contains many of the same basic functions found in humans. Moreover, flies are an already established model to study stress induced depression.
No, despite some of the headlines that are spreading across the Internet, scientists have not found that flies are emotional beings, nor did they demonstrate that the insects experience feelings like fear in a similar way to us.
Flies act as scavengers consuming rotting organic matter so we don't have to deal with it which is a very important role in the environment. If it wasn't for flies, there would be rubbish and dead animal carcasses everywhere.
Dividing 110 pounds by the lift of a housefly, we find you'd need five million of the insects to lift you off the ground.
Flies have 2 large Compound Eyes which consists of 3,000 to 6,000 Simple Eyes that give them the ability to see a wider range around their bodies without the need to move their heads. In between their Compound Eyes are 3 triangular shaped Simple Eyes called Ocelli used for navigation.
Over 15 years ago, researchers found that insects, and fruit flies in particular, feel something akin to acute pain called “nociception.” When they encounter extreme heat, cold or physically harmful stimuli, they react, much in the same way humans react to pain.
For example, people and tomatoes share as much as 60 percent of the same genes. Lemaux has been speaking about genetic engineering for a decade as he and her colleagues delve deeper into plant breeding.
Mice and humans share approximately 70 percent of the same protein-coding gene sequences, though these genes constitute just 1.5 percent of their respective genomes.
As a result humans share about 40% of our DNA with apples.