To make better biomedical tools, a grad student picks apart fireflies' glow - STAT

To make better biomedical tools, a grad student picks apart fireflies' glow - STAT

Inside STAT: To make better biomedical research tools, a grad student picks apart fireflies’ glow

(RADIM SCHREIBER/FIREFLYEXPERIENCE.ORG)

Tim Fallon once nabbed about 100 fireflies from a New Jersey meadow in a bid to figure out which genes were highly expressed in the firefly's glowing spot. Now, two years after he scooped the fireflies up in butterfly nets, Fallon and his team at the MIT-affiliated Whitehead Institute are publishing this firefly's genome for the first time. They're hopeful the secrets to a firefly's glow could help other scientists develop better glowing tools to study disease and come up with therapies. STAT's Eric Boodman has more here.