For more than a century, the humble fruit fly has raided the way for many critical scientific advances.
This little insect helped researchers discover that radiographs can cause genetic mutations. That genes are transmitted from father to child through chromosomes. That a gene called period helps our bodies to maintain time, and that interruptions in that internal clock can lead to a delay and a greater risk of neurological and metabolic diseases.
These discoveries, along with almost another 90,000 studies, are part of a key online database called Flybase that researchers usually use to help them more quickly design new experiments. These tests explore the underlying causes of the disease and could help with the development of new treatments. Science is based on previous ideas, and a practical repository of past advances serves as a ignition for future discoveries.
The website receives around 770,000 visits to the pages every month of scientists working worldwide in the development of personalized therapies for rare cancers, modeling human neurodegenerative diseases and detection of candidates for medications for conditions such as Alzheimer’s.
Now, that critical resource is on the verge of layoffs that endanger their future and their ability to make research more efficient.
This spring, the The Trump administration, as part of its broader financing cuts of $ 2.2 billion at Harvard University, rescinded a subsidy used to maintain the flybase.
“I use Flybase every day. It is very essential,” said Celeste Berg, professor of genome sciences at Washington University, which is not part of the team that operates Flybase. “What we know about human genes and how they work almost completely from model systems such as Drosophila.”
Humans share about 60% of our fruit flies genes, also known by their scientific name Drosophila Melanogaster.
The future Flybase stands out how interconnected and interdependent research efforts are and how the effects of the funds cut an institution can undertake throughout the world. More than 4,000 laboratories use Flybase.
Harvard was receiving around $ 2 million a year in federal funds to maintain the Flybase, which was the vast majority of the total operational budget of the website. But the University of New Mexico, the University of Indiana and the University of Cambridge in England are partners that help Harvard administer Flybase and are also beneficiaries.
“This is not only affecting Harvard,” said Brian Calvi, a professor of biology at Indiana University, which is part of the Flybase load management team. “The domino effect is for the international community of biomedical research.”
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard rescued Flybase with provisional funds, but that support will leave in October, according to Norbert Perrimon, professor of development biology at the Harvard Medicine Faculty.
A judge at the beginning of this month ordered the Trump administration to restore funds to Harvard investigators who lost subsidies, but the money has not begun to flow Flybase, said Perrimon. The administration has promised to appeal the decision, which could stop the flow of funds.
The White House did not respond to a request for comments. The Department of Health and Human Services of the United States, which supervises the National Health Institutes, declined to comment.
The transmitter, a neuroscience news site, reported for the first time about dismissals in Flybase. Harvard Crimson reported the decision of the Harvard Arts and Sciences Faculty of not continuing with provisional funds.
Calvi said the Flybase subsidy provided a complete or partial salary for eight people in Harvard, three in Indiana, five in Cambridge and one at the University of New Mexico. Both Indiana and Cambridge were able to obtain funds to maintain their part of the program operating next year. New Mexico’s position ended in August.
Flybase, who has been operating since 1992, has received federal support for more than three decades. Curra and summarizes research work, organizes findings on particular genes and catalog information about fruit flies that have genetically modified to destroy how certain genes guide normal development.
The fruit flies are among the most important animal models for biomedical research because scientists have been able to map their genomes and brains. They are also relatively easy and cheap to handle.
Berg, a professor of genome sciences and an avid user of the Flybase chain, studies human development and how cells form organs. Flybase allows you to search and identify genes of interest for experiments. Then try how to change the expression of these genes affects the arrangement of the cells.
Each year, thousands of fruit fly papers are added to the FLYs chain and are summarized. Without the Flybase base, Berg said that researchers and doctors would have difficulty staying up to date and could lose key connections on particular genes.
Researchers with the network of non -diagnosed diseases use Flybase to help identify whether genetic mutations in children could be contributing to rare and inexplicable diseases. Scientists identify genetic variants in these patients and then compare those mutations with previous research of those genes in the flies.
Flybase now is crowdfunding support on its website.
“Given the importance of the Flybase base for the broader community of American and international scientific research, we hope that other institutions and other stakeholders in Harvard support those efforts,” said James Chisholm, a spokesman for Harvard Harvard Harvard Arts and Science Safeguard “.
Two Harvard -based employees have already been fired from their work in Flybase, and another six are scheduled for layoffs later in September and early, said Perrimon.
“If we cannot retain the key personnel, it will be very difficult to recover people who have knowledge to keep the databases in operation,” said Perrimon. “That would be the point of no return for Flybase.”
The interruption of the financing also threatens the plans to transfer the Flebase data to a new long -term house called Alliance of Genome Resources. The fruit flies are among several “common” model organisms, along with rats, mice and worms, which are used in laboratories and feel the foundations for understanding human biology.
The National Health Institutes have spent around $ 5 million a year since 2017 to merge several databases, including Flybase, Wormbase and the mouse genome database, among a handful of others. Each contains information that human health researchers can cross references to study important genes for human health more efficiently.
“If you are studying human genes and you have to study everything that is known, you have to go to all these [websites] And learn the system, “said Paul Sternberg, professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology, which leads the effort of the alliance.” We want unique purchases. ”
The alliance budget expired on June 30, and Sternberg said he is waiting for a financing renewal decision of NIH himself. He said that the interruption of Flybase financing represents a new and unexpected obstacle to do The most useful and easier research results.
“We need to do this fast, but when you are losing staff and energy, that is what makes it worthy,” Sternberg said. “Do not throw additional obstacles. That’s all we ask.”
Flybase had planned to merge with the alliance in 2029. Now, Calvi and others are pressing for faster fusion, before Flybase’s financial track is exhausted. The donations that the organization seeks are destined to help pay that.
“So far they are less than $ 100,000,” Calvi said about the crowdfunding efforts of the organization. “We probably need a million.”
