You may come away with a newfound respect for something you can find in your kitchen — fruit flies.
These tiny creatures are helping scientists research how memory works.
With a wall full of scribbles of theories and equations, scientist Kausik Si says he explores all paths in his research as director of Stowers Institute for Medical Research.
“The wall behind me at least is how we practice science,” Si said. “Memory defines who we are. I set out trying to understand one very simple thing, something that you learn when you are very young and remember it your entire life.”
Si said he's researching what keeps memories alive and is studying Alzheimer’s and the loss of memory.
His research led him to amyloids. He looks into why the brain makes them and why they cause disease.
As part of his studies, he looks at lots and lots of fruit flies, and even has an enlarged model of a fruit fly brain.
He said fruit flies have strong memory components; how to find food, partners and know its own fears.
These are essential tools for survival and Si wants to know how the fruit flies remember to do those things.
Si dives deep into individual cells looking at proteins and how they function.
He said humans have 86 billion neurons, while rodents have 150 million neurons.
Fruit flies have 150,000 neurons.
Si said flies have historic knowledge.
“It has this unique sort of tools that allow us to look at the memory from the whole brain level to an individual cell,” Si said. “Within the cell we can dive deep and look at parts of the cell. Within that part, we can dive back and look at proteins, the ultimate functional, the unit, the one that caused amyloid.”
He said understanding those parts can help with the human brain.
“We know a lot of focus has been given to the other side of memory in the context of disease," Si said. "The reason I am hopeful, that people are also focusing equally as intensely on this side, the good side of how we make a memory. The chance of making progress gets better and better and better. That’s why I am eternally hopeful, what else do we have but hope?”
