Two evolutionary biologists when met for the first time four-and-half years ago, they decided to carry out an experiment to solve a century-old evolutionary riddle, and now it seems that the duo have an answer to it.

The duo was looking for a gene that helped make each species look unique and separate from each other. At their first meeting, Phadnis, who now leads a research team at the University of Utah, sketched out the experiment’s parameters and planned to mutate one of the fly species, thus allowing males to be born.

For this they needed to find seven male flies to identify the mystery gene’s identity. The scientists called the elusive sons as the Seven Samurai.

About six months later they found zero samurai flies, and about a year later they found that the team has mated around 55,000 mother and mutant father pairs, sifted through 330,000 daughter flies and found six precious sons.

“We were joking at that point that the six [insect] males we had in the freezer were more valuable than Nitin’s and my cars, given the amount of effort and time that had gone into it”, Malik said.

They said they never found that seventh samurai, but along with geneticists Drs. Jacob Kitzman, of the University of Michigan, and Jay Shendure, of the University of Washington, Phadnis came to know that all six males had mutations in the same, single gene.

Malik said this was the answer they were looking for. The garbled-looking acronym gfzf, the gene is normally important for regulating the cell cycle, where each cell divides into two, he said.