Air date: November 15, 2009

Host: Kathy Miller, MD

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Interview: Edward Kravitz, PhD, professor of neurobiology, Harvard University

Let’s take a break from human medicine and talk about bugs for a few minutes.

We're talking fruit flies. More precisely, we're interested in what female fruit flies do after they’re done mating.

There’s a serious reason we’re talking about this: this pheromone research could lead to new ways of controlling insect populations, especially for insects like mosquitoes, which transmit malaria.

It turns out that female fruit flies send a signal to male fruit flies to, shall we say, "buzz off" for a week or so.

Today, Sound Medicine’s Dr. Kathy Miller speaks with Harvard neurobiologist Edward Kravitz about this discovery.

Additional Resources:

• Read more about the Harvard pheremone research in the Harvard University newsroom.

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