Computers 'Trained' To Analyze Fruit-fly Behavior
Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 22:28
in Biology & Nature
Scientists have trained computers to automatically analyze aggression and courtship in fruit flies, opening the way for researchers to perform large-scale, high-throughput screens for genes that control these innate behaviors. The program allows computers to examine half an hour of video footage of pairs of interacting flies in what is almost real time; characterizing the behavior of a new line of flies "by hand" might take a biologist more than 100 hours.