Paperback of the day

The keystone of biology labs over the past 100 years was not the microscope or the meter, but the milk bottle. Its vital substance was not some synthesised pharmaceutical, but rotting banana. This is what was needed to house and feed Drosophila, commonly known as the fruit fly.

Drosophila, conveniently short in lifespan, with its generations counted in fortnights, made experimental biology an especially practical proposition. The story of its scientific career is the story of genetics, of modern evolutionary theory, and of biologists' ongoing attempts to untease the processes by which organisms take shape. Martin Brookes's account is, not inappropriately, flyweight, and its contents easy to digest.