The fruit fly revolutionized biology. Now it’s boosting science in Africa

When Amos Abolaji returned to Nigeria from a year abroad, he brought home a strange souvenir — two jars full of fruit flies.

The biochemist had been conducting postdoctoral research at the Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil on the health effects of certain pollutants. He had used laboratory rodents while working on his Ph.D. in Nigeria and wasn’t previously exposed to the use of fruit flies. But when Abolaji joined toxicologist Joao Batista Teixeira da Rocha’s lab in Brazil, “he told me he stopped the use of rodents for research.” Rocha had switched to using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

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