The human brain consists of approximately one hundred billion nerve cells. Each of these cells needs to connect to specific other cells during the brain’s development in order to form a fully functional organism. Yet how does a nerve cell know w…
By teaching fruit flies to avoid an odor and isolating mutant flies that can?t remember their lessons, researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York have identified dozens of genes required for long-term memory. In the same study, using DNA chip technology, the scientists identified another large group of candidate memory genes that are either switched on or off in the fly brain during memory formation.