...And this is how I became the common household's nuisance

The article used for this current event can be found here.

Cramped, also known as 'crm', is a single gene in the fruit fly that supposedly helped it survived colder environments in the northern hemisphere when it migrated from Africa. Of course, it took thousands of years worth of evolution for the fruit fly to get as common as it is now. It was figured that the alleles of the crm protein in fruit fly from Europe would function differently from that of a fruit fly from Africa, if the protein was important to the fly's response to temperature. After experimentation, it was discovered that different protein alleles were associated with differences in how temperature influenced actions were affected.

It's very interesting to me that the common fruit fly has a single protein that allowed it to evolve to adapt to various temperatures and environments. As stupid as it may sound, I didn't know that fruit flies originated from the sub-Sahara. This article makes me wonder if there are anymore species that have protein like this that allows them to adapt to many different environments. I'm hoping more research will come from this, such as the evolution of out creatures.

--Brittany Graham