Scientists have sequenced the genome of the common housefly and say the findings may help humans deal with toxic and disease causing environments.
The housefly (Musca domestica) lives on human and animal waste. They are an important species for scientific study because of their roles as waste decomposers and as carriers of over 100 human diseases, including typhoid, tuberculosis and worms.
Understanding how the housefly is immune to the human diseases it carries could help scientists to create treatments or vaccines for these diseases.
In the study, researchers sequenced the genomes of six female houseflies, creating a 691 Mb long sequence.
They compared it to the 123 Mb Drosophila melanogaster genome, to give an indication of the genes that were unique to housefly, and could be candidates for further study.
The comparison showed that the fly had many more immune genes, and that these were of a higher diversity than in the Drosophila genome.
The fly genome also contained unique detoxification genes, which produce proteins that help the fly break down waste.
Information about these genes could help us to handle human waste and improve the environment, researchers said.
Researchers said that because the housefly is so intimately involved in human processes, sequencing its genome will have implications for human health, identifying the genes that allow the flies to live in toxic environments.
"Houseflies are a fascinating insect for scientists in many areas, such as developmental biology, sex determination, immunity, toxicology and physiology," said lead author of the paper Jeff Scott from Cornell University.
"The completed genome will be a phenomenal tool for researchers in all of these fields and will facilitate rapid advancements," Scott said.
