FLY IN THE OINTMENT

The amazing discoveries found using fruit flies. This week: body clock rhythms. THE discovery of the gene in fruit flies that regulates the biological clock in all living things won the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine last October for three U.S. scientists; Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young.

The gene, called ‘period’, has proved crucial to our understanding about how the light from computer screens can damage our health — increasing the risk of illnesses such as diabetes and cancer. This is because the light knocks our body clock out of synch. Research on fruit flies found that light entering their eyes sets the body clock’s rhythm so that it accords with night and day — but tests have shown that even brief pulses of light during the night can wrongly reset the clock.