Drosophila gains traction as a repurposed tool to investigate metabolism

•Drosophila provides a variety of approaches to investigate human metabolic disorders.•Drosophila genetics is being used to identify novel obesity susceptibility genes.•Conserved molecular pathways can be exploited to recapitulate metabolic phenotypes.

The use of fruit flies has recently emerged as a powerful experimental paradigm to study the core aspects of energy metabolism. The fundamental need for lipid and carbohydrate processing and storage across species dictates that the central regulators that control metabolism are highly conserved through evolution. Accordingly, the Drosophila system is being used to identify human disease genes and has the potential to model successfully human disorders that center on excessive caloric intake and metabolic dysfunction, including diet-induced lipotoxicity and type 2 diabetes. We review here recent progress on this front and contend that increasing such efforts will yield unexpectedly high rates of experimental return, thereby leading to novel approaches in the treatment of obesity and its comorbidities.