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News From the Field

Addressing Pain and Disease on the Fly


December 6, 2011

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Studies of a protein that fruit flies use to sense heat and chemicals may someday provide solutions to human pain and the control of disease-spreading mosquitoes. In the current issue of Nature, biologist Paul Garrity of the National Center for Behavioral Genomics at Brandeis University and his team discovered how fruit flies distinguish the warmth of a summer day from the pungency of wasabi by using TRPA1, a protein whose human relative is critical for pain and inflammation.Full Story

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Brandeis University

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