Who Knew? Fruit Flies Get Kidney Stones Too

A team from Mayo Clinic and the University of Glasgow recently presented their findings on kidney stones in fruit flies at the Genetics Society of America annual meeting. According to physiologist Michael F. Romero, Ph.D., of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn the kidney tubules of a fruit fly are transparent and accessible making them easy to study and not only that the researchers were able to see the new stones as they started to form. Dr. Romero says that the presence of kidney stones didn't seem to affect the fruit flies.



Dr. Romero's team was able to find a gene that encodes a protein that transports oxalate into the fly kidney which leads to kidney stones. Oxlata is also the cause of kidney stone formation in human. When the gene for that protein was modiefied, the fruit flies got fewer kidney stones.  This shows that study of kidney stones in fruit flies can one day lead to treatments in humans.

Dr. Romero and his colleagues are now using this gene as a target for possible drug development. Following is a link to a video on kidney stone formation in Drosophila Fruit flies 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FKAEii-rHsM