Fly: An experimental life by Martin Brookes, Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
£16.99, ISBN 0297645897
CONFESSED fly-hater Martin Brookes has crafted a paeon to the fruit fly,
better known to biologists as Drosophila melanogaster. But who, other
than Brookes and his ilk, would wish to read such a book?
The answer is anyone who is interested in discovering how
scientists—eager to understand the mechanisms of genetics, heredity,
development, learning, sex and longevity—recognised in this little beast a
willing “model organism” for their experiments. Undemanding (“a half-pint milk
bottle with a piece of rotting banana would keep two hundred flies happy…
