Slashdot Mirror
A Genetically Engineered Fly That Can Smell Light
An anonymous reader writes "It sounds like a cool — if somewhat pointless — super-powered insect: a fly that can smell light! Researchers added a light-sensitive protein to a fruit fly's olfactory neurons, which caused the neurons to fire when the fly was exposed to a certain wavelength of blue light. Adding the protein specifically to neurons that respond to good smells, like bananas, makes for a light-seeking fly."
... malfunction genetically?
They could've made them think a wavelength smells terrible and then sold fly repellant lightbulbs.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
In other words, it can see with its nose.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
I mean, flies are attracted to light already.
Great work guys. You just invented moths.
Finally, we have been able to achieve what we always needed: flies that can compete with human art critics.
On the other hand these flies are not as advanced as Arizona lawmakers, who apparently can feel if one is an illegal alien by 'looking at brands of shoes' (incidentally, will this not force the cops to hire a disproportional number of gays into service?)
You can't handle the truth.
Smell-o-Vision, here we come...
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
... I will create a Moquito that can see farts! Thus ending the age old question of "Who dealt it?"
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. heh.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
Just think if we could develop flies that eat oil. That'd clean up the gulf spill... and then some!
I could have done that same research with $200 worth of drugs.
This signature serves no purpose other than to help you see which posts were made by me.
... The Fly: help me, help me. I'm so hungry and light is not filling.
It would be more accurate to say that the flies perceive light that falls on those receptors fairly non-specifically as smell. To 'see' implies perception of light, but the lack of optics and the low-level organization that exists in photoreceptors, it's unlikely that the flies can perceive anything more detailed than a burst of smell when a light comes on.
I guess now we know how the smelloscope works ...
they can't smell shit from shinola
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So what you are saying here is that if we can make an explosive small enough we can create laser guided flies that will seek out the spot and land and detonate. Should be good for taking off a nose or ear at least. Better yet a human only skin absorb-able poison that you can dip the fly into then give the target a coating of that light. Bingo one dead target and the murder weapon wings it way to oblivion.
Why bother
"I love the smell of blue in the morning..."
This ain't rocket surgery.
Well, I, for one, am busy trying to figure out where the light blue bananas are...
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Man, I could smell your feet a mile away!
Smile away!
It's not like "sight" and "smell" go into totally separate processing units along totally separate conductors: both signals still went through a nerve and into a little fly brain.
All they did was get a perception of light to travel into the brain on a different bundle of almost identical nerves. What's the big deal? Haven't these people ever seen the Matrix? If you perceive it, you perceive it; for most purposes it doesn't make a damn bit of difference how the perception got into your brain.
if they call it "smision."
...its smells so bright it makes your eyes water.
But... why?
I thought it smelled purple in here
Back in my mis-spent youth, a hit of blotter acid was all we needed to smell light, hear colors, and see sounds.
A fly that can smell light? Big deal.
My wife says that my feet smell evil.
You are welcome on my lawn.
..is that the fly got Jeff Goldblum's nose.
* sniffs the air * What smells like blue?
... but how many asses it has?
One of the coolest sites, ever: zombo.com
.....this is what happens when you let Grant Morrison reboot nature.
haven't you ever heard? see no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil?
so many bad jokes.
but so much time to read....
Seriously, mod this man UP. I understand that every insect/alien/Ballmer thread has an "I for one" post, but to be labeled redundant as the first of it's kind in a thread is ridiculous.
I, for one, DO NOT welcome our redundant-modding moderators.
It is an exceedingly idiotic collection of assumptions and ignorance too profound to be able to recognize from the inside. There's not a shred of evidence saying that if a neuron has some perceptual tricera input, the signal would be anything other than the same old fluctuating ion densities. It certainly would not generate a signal part light-responsive and have that push through the neuron that's essentially unrelated. Just as any other increased signal impinging on a neuron causes it to fire more proportionally, I doubt the answer is 'in there'. Ah well, got to get back to work. Have fun.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
It would be so much cooler if they embedded a chip in the fly and became the first to transmit a virus from a PC to an insect that smells light. http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/05/26/1214214/Scientist-Infects-Self-With-Computer-Virus?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+(Slashdot)
My wife says that my feet smell evil.
They led you to her didn't they?
"The company, owned by Apple, has also taken out a patent on a very specific frequency of insect zapper. While apologising for the accidental release of the flies, Jobs restated the company's pledge to make 1billion iZappers which are iLink compatible with your iHouse software. Press Buy Now on your iCare."
Now all we need is to invent the smell-o-scope so we can smell distent cosmic object. Too bad, Wernstrom would give it "the worst grade imaginable--an A minus minus".
or a symptom of synaesthesia? Now we will know if orange smells like orange.
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
I know this engineer who can feel colours: in his experience certain sensations would invoke colours.
He can't really explain or verbalize it and while he tries to he is at lost for words. When I inquire it's just a "strong association" he insists it's a physical experience and not so much "association".
You often hear him say "this feels yellow" something in that fashion.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Cool, now these flies will head straight to the nearest bug zapper...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Shouldn't they be working on one which has been engineered to detect a half-open window so they can fly out of it?
I keeps seeing a little tiny Icarus head on a fly's body flying to the sun crying "help me help meeeeee....."
Is it smelling light, or seeing it? Is sight the ability of an organism to detect photons hitting it, or simply how an organism perceives some sort of physical stimulus? The latter seems less useful, since it would allow sight, smell, touch to all refer to the same physical stimulus.
Maybe work on a therapy that would mend tissue cell DNA, and RNA?
I do.
My dad can hear pudding
Now they need to genetically engineer fish to consume crude oil. It may mess up the future accountability issue, but it sure can save a lot of animal life.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
Fly 1: "Whoa man, what smells like fresh bananas? I'm starving"
Fly 2: "We're flying over a river right now..."
Fly 1: "I know, do you smell it?"
Fly 2: "Dude, how much dog s*** did you eat last night?"
That's a great idea, then it never comes to market because the university owns the patent and they want too much for the exclusive royalties, if you can even pin them down for such a contract. How are you going to come up with such a document anyways without coughing up all the dough to pay a patent lawyer to write the hundred++ page document? And how are you going to get that dough in the first place. It's much easier to magically wave your hand and say it can happen.
No, you do what we did, which is what all smart people do, and you write the research paper on something sufficiently interesting to get you grants, but you save the really good ideas for your own startup. We weren't about to give ours away. We'd already given the school 5 years of $30k+ tuition.