Patricka Williams-Simon, a doctoral fellow in biological sciences at MU who led the study, places fruit flies into a box to study how well they learn and remember. She and the team discovered some fruit flies learn better than others.
Scientists at the University of Missouri are studying genes of fruit flies to explore why an individual fly can be a better learner than another. Many of those genes in fruit flies are similar to those found in people.
Patricka Williams-Simon, a doctoral fellow in biological sciences who led the study, worked with over 40,000 individual fruit flies to study their abilities to learn and remember.
Elizabeth King, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science, said all of the nine genes they discovered are previously known to affect the nervous system or the brain, but not also learning and memory.