Fruitless Smell

As the old joke goes: time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. But to enjoy their tasty treat, the insects first have to sniff it out. Fruit fly antennae – seen here under a high-powered fluorescence microscope – are packed full of special nerve cells called olfactory receptors, which detect smelly molecules in the air and tell the fly whether food (or a potential mate) is nearby. There’s a crucial difference between the two antennae in this image. The one on the left is normal, while the one on the right comes from a fly lacking a gene called alhambra, which works together with another well-known fruit fly gene called fruitless. Male fruit flies with faulty fruitless have problems getting down to mating with female flies – in fact, they don’t seem very interested in the ladies at all, with some preferring to go for the boys.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Catherine Hueston and Douglas Olsen, and colleagues
• Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Biology, April 2016