Six Nobel prizes – what’s the fascination with the fruit fly?

Drosophila share 60 per cent of human DNA, making them perfect for research that has led to vital strides in treating cancer, autism, diabetes and many other ills. Now scientists in the field have won yet another Nobel

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

With these lines, from The Fly, William Blake posed a question of unusual prescience for a poet writing 200 years ago. At first glance, there seem to be few similarities between Homo sapiens and airborne insects. Yet Blake was not so sure. He could see connections. And in recent years, science has found that he was probably correct. Fruit flies, it transpires, have common features with humans to a remarkable degree (we share 60% of the same DNA) - a point underlined last week when the Nobel committee awarded yet another prize to scientists who have used Drosophila melanogaster as the basis of groundbreaking research.

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