Scientists are always on the lookout for new and safer methods of controlling pain in humans. A  research team from the University of Georgia believe that the common fruit fly may hold the key to creating new pain killers. To find out more, head on over to the full article.

Could the newly discovered aggression genes in fruit fly be responsible for the antics of Hollywood's Baddest Bad Boy? U.S. geneticists from North Carolina State University say that the genes identified in the Drosophila melanogaster may contribute to abnormal aggression in celebrities, plain humans and other animals.

In their experiment, scientists tormented fruit flies by making them fight for their food. After 28 generations, two distinct groups emerged. The high aggression group, call them the Crowe gang, were noted for more kicking, chasing and boxing. On the other hand, a Ghandi-esque, low aggression group displayed the same reaction as the 90-lb weakling who got sand kicked on his face - hardly a peep.

The researchers said that the environment remains more important than the genes, but found the effect of the aggression gene very interesting.

The genus Drosophila includes fruit flies, vinegar flies, wine flies, pomace flies, grape flies, and picked fruit-flies. But Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly, is the one that plays a very important role in genetic studies focusing on development, physiology, ecology, and behaviour, among others.

In the upcoming launch of space shuttle Discovery this coming Saturday, astronauts would have a lot of travel companions. Thousands of fruit flies are also going aboard the shuttle to participate in an experiment that would aim to know how space messes with the immune system.

Trivia: Fruit flies are space pioneers. They were the first animals flown in space, inside a U.S. V2 rocket in 1946 to assess the effects of radiation. Fruit flies have been racking frequent flyer miles to space since they regularly board Russian and U.S. missions ever since.

So how will the experiment go? NASA will send one tray of adult fruit flies and another of embryonic flies that will mature into adult flies by the time the shuttle lands at the end of its 12-day mission. Aside from that, test tubes full of a fungus called Beauveria bassiana also will fly.

After the mission, both sets of flies, along with a genetically identical control set of flies grown at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, will be exposed to the space-exposed fungus to test their immune system responses.

Scientists will be in the know about the flies' immune response through observing cell counts and measures of blood-clotting ability and of compounds produced to eliminate the fungus. The study will also look at the progression of cancerous and benign tumor cells in the flies, as the radiation of space increases the risk of cancer in astronauts. Past experiments reveal that near-weightlessness of spaceflight affects an astronaut's biology and bugs that cause various medical conditions.

Fruit flies were chosen to participate in this experiment because they make good model organisms for studying such processes as the effect of space radiation on human genetics and immunity. Fruit flies have short life spans, reproduce quickly, and eat next to nothing, and their DNA mutates rapidly.