On Mar. 9, 2022, Harvard Medical School announced that an international research team had completed an atlas of every cell found in adult fruit flies, one of the most important animal models in science and medicine.

Described online Mar. 4 in Science, the atlas contains more than 580,000 cells representing more than 250 distinct cell types. Many of the cell types are characterized for the first time. Fruit flies have played a leading role in biological research for over a century, providing key insights into the basic workings of biological mechanisms such as genetics and developmental biology and playing vital roles in the development of treatments for cancer, immune diseases, diabetes, and more.