UNM biologists are studying fruit flies to understand the development of the human heart.
Professor Richard Cripps and a team of biologists examine the fruit fly heart to study its similarities to the human heart.
"The genes that construct the fly heart are closely related to those which form the human heart," Cripps said.
Cripps said his team will use the research to study how human hearts are formed.
He said the team studies fruit fly embryos under microscopes to look at the cells that form their hearts. The team monitors the baby flys' transformation into adult flies.
It takes 10 days for the maggot to become an adult fly, Cripps said.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
By monitoring the maggot's transformation, the team is able to study how its heart cells are constructed and how the cells build parts of the heart, he said.
Ankita Shah, graduate student at UNM, said she has been researching fruit flies for four years.
"The adult heart is very different from the larval heart," Shah said.
She said the team also researches skeletal muscle development. Shah said the team studies the fly's wing movement to learn what muscles enable it to fly.
"There are similar mechanisms between flies and humans," she said. "This gives us ideas about how our muscles are generated."
Phil Baker, a UNM graduate student, said he has been involved with the research for six years.
He said the research is important because it provides answers to unknown questions.
"It's cool to get answers to questions no one else knows," Baker said.
Baker said he researches a specific gene in the fruit fly heart that is essential to muscle development throughout the fly's life cycle.
"The gene is important, because it's not well-known," Baker said.
Baker said the team chose fruit flies because they are easy to research.
Cripps received a $1.375 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for a five-year research program to study cell and muscle development.
Cripps said the team hopes to complete its research before the grant is up and plans to study specifically how cells form the valve-like structures that pump blood into the heart.
"We want to learn what genes control the instruction process," Cripps said.
He said the research will focus more heavily on cell structure, not disease formation.
