While on the faculty of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, co-author Robert Garofalo, now of Pfizer Global Research and Development, originally isolated the mutant gene in fruit flies. Garofalo studied diabetes, looking into insulin receptor function. To gain a clearer understanding of that function, he and colleagues developed fruit flies with mutations in their insulin receptors. They found that this mutation limited the flies' growth and rendered them infertile. When Garofalo's studies were published in 1996, Tatar noticed that the photos of mutant fly ovaries looked very similar to the ovaries of fruit flies in diapause, an infertile hibernation-like state in which insects exhibit prolonged lifespan.
Flies go into diapause during food shortages.
Tatar was following other studies of insulin's role in prolonging lifespan in worms. He proposed a collaboration with Garofalo to determine if the delayed aging induced by mutated insulin-receptors in worms would also hold true in fruit flies with mutated insulin receptors. The study in Science shows that this is indeed the case. The collaboration bred both research and publication opportunities for undergraduates. It did, suggesting the hormone's key link in the aging mechanism.