At 11:13 pm on November 15, 2024, with the successful launch of the Long March-7 carrier rocket, China sent fruit flies to the space station for the first time to conduct scientific experiments.

“This research accumulates the efforts and dedication of two generations of scientists at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, over several decades”, said Yan Li, a researcher at the Institute of Biophysics. Now, Chinese scientists are finally able to conduct research on the effects of submagnetic-microgravity environments on the genes, behavior, and survival and reproduction of fruit flies aboard the space station.

“A single spark” is waiting to start a prairie fire

Actually, the story of “fruit flies flying to the sky” can be traced back to several decades ago.

In 1993, the academician, Aike Guo, established China’s first laboratory for learning and memory research using fruit flies as a model organism at the Institute of Biophysics. In 1998, Yan Li, after graduating from the School of Life Sciences at Peking University, joined the Institute of Biophysics to pursue his doctoral degree.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Aike Guo’s team turned their attention to submagnetic biology research using fruit flies as model organisms. However, since the submagnetic biological effects are relatively weak and it takes multiple generations of transmission to observe changes, many scholars considered that despite the perspectiveness of the research, the output and return cannot be obtained immediately. Therefore, related studies once fell into a period of stagnation.

But even during the relatively obscure period of research, the team tried their best to preserve the “spark” of this study. Currently, the Institute of Biophysics has spent over ten years cultivating more than 200 generations of fruit flies in a submagnetic environment, which is an unparalleled record among international peers and lays the foundation for conducting fruit fly research on the Chinese space station.

For a long time, the “spark” of this research lit up alone but stubbornly, waiting for a moment to ignite the prairie fire.

Return to China for full-time career and continue the research

After graduating from the Institute of Biophysics as a doctor, Yan Li went to the University of California, San Francisco for postdoctoral research and later served as a research assistant professor at Northwestern University in the United States.

At the beginning of 2010, Yan Li chose to return to the State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognition of the Institute of Biophysics, took the full-time career, and took over the baton of “making fruit flies fly to the sky”.

During the ten years since returning to China, she and researcher Rongqiao He from the Institute of Biophysics jointly applied for a research project on fruit flies in microgravity and submagnetic environments. Until July 2020, Yan Li’s team finally received the project approval notice.

This is a time-tested exploration. At the time of project approval, Academician Aike Guo was already 80 years old, and at critical stages of project implementation, he made multiple trips from Shanghai to Beijing to oversee the details of the project.

Fruit flies flying to the sky

To conduct space experiments more effectively, the Institute of Biophysics cooperates closely with the Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics and other scientific research institutions in ground experiments.

In China’s space station, the fruit flies were divided into two groups, with one group living in a microgravity environment in space, and the other group placed in a magnetic shielding device and subjected to both microgravity and submagnetic environmental tests. Fortunately, these small organisms quickly adapted to the new environment.

Amidst the surprise, Yan Li’s greatest concern was the reproductive behavior of the fruit flies. Until the morning of November 19th, images transmitted from space showed a tiny fruit fly emerging from its pupa and surveying the unfamiliar world. The birth of this fruit fly also signified that China has successfully achieved the breeding of fruit flies in space for the first time.

Yan Li said, “The fruit fly is the pioneer for human exploring the space.”