Regulating the rapidly developing fruit fly

From birth, it takes humans almost two decades to reach adulthood; for a fruit fly, it takes only about 10 days. During a fly embryo’s initial stages of development, the insect looks different from minute to minute, and its body plan is defined in just a few hours. Caltech researchers have now gained new insights into how a fly’s genes influence this fast period of development—work that ultimately could shed light on the rapid cellular proliferation that occurs in other situations, including human cancers.