Northern Ontario researcher looks to fruit flies for cancer cure

You will find thousands upon thousands of fruit flies behindthe door of the aptly named fly lab at Laurentian University in Sudbury.

But Thomas Merritt's research has nothing to do with how to rid your kitchenof the sometimes pesky creatures.

Instead, the Canada Research Chair inGenomics and Bioinformaticsis using the genetic system of the fly to help understand how the human system works.

"We share about 80 percent of our genes with fruit flies,"Merrittsaid. "The way that the genes work in a fly is exactly the way they work in a human."

The research using the flies is providing abetter understanding of how genes can be turned on and off, and that ishelping in the search for a cure for cancer, amongother diseases, Merritt said.

The CBC Sudbury'sMegan Thomas took a tour of the fly lab to find out more about the research: