The fruit fly had 15 minutes of fame during the 2008 presidential general election campaign when it was suggested that money could be better spent than on fruit fly research. Dr. Joe Piven, director of the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, and Manzoor Bhat, Ph.D., professor of cell and molecular biology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine, explain the importance of fruit fly research on their work in autism.

Submitted by the University of North Carolina