ALCOHOL abuse could be treated with cancer drugs, if they work the same way in humans as they do in fruit flies.
People who can hold their booze without getting drunk tend to drink more heavily than those who are more susceptible to alcohol. To probe the genetic basis of these differences, a team led by Ulrike Heberlein at the University of California, San Francisco, turned to fruit flies.
Getting drunk affects flies in a rather similar way to pub-crawlers. “They go through a phase of hyperactivity and gradually become uncoordinated,” says Heberlein. “They fall over and eventually they are…
