There has been rapid growth in the use of Drosophila and other invertebrate systems to dissect mechanisms governing metabolism. New assays and approaches to physiology have aligned with superlative genetic tools in fruit flies to provide a powerful platform for posing new questions, or dissecting classical problems in metabolism and disease genetics. In multiple examples, these discoveries exploit experimental advantages as-yet unavailable in mammalian systems. Here, we illustrate how fly studies have addressed long-standing questions in three broad areas—inter-organ signaling through hormonal or neural mechanisms governing metabolism, intestinal interoception and feeding, and the cellular and signaling basis of sexually dimorphic metabolism and physiology—and how these findings relate to human (patho)physiology. The imaginative application of integrative physiology and related approaches in flies to questions in metabolism is expanding, and will be an engine of discovery, revealing paradigmatic features of metabolism underlying human diseases and physiological equipoise in health.

果蝇的使用量迅速增长和其他无脊椎动物系统来剖析控制新陈代谢的机制。新的生理学分析和方法与果蝇中最高级的遗传工具相一致，为提出新问题或剖析新陈代谢和疾病遗传学中的经典问题提供了一个强大的平台。在多个示例中，这些发现利用了哺乳动物系统中尚未获得的实验优势。在这里，我们说明了苍蝇研究如何解决三个广泛领域中长期存在的问题——通过控制新陈代谢的激素或神经机制的器官间信号传导、肠道内感受和进食，以及两性代谢和生理学的细胞和信号传导基础——以及如何这些发现与人类（病理）生理学有关。