INS and diabetes mellitus: Drosophila is uniquely poised to study the insulin pathway and diabetes chronic aspects: it has a very well-developed genetic toolkit simply not available, or not as easily amenable, and with higher genetic background homogeneity and rigor as other models, a very highly polished sequenced genome, a “simplified” insulin pathway, with components exhibiting far less redundancy than, for example, vertebrate models, and the availability of different species with similar sequenced genomes that represent “natural” experiments with different lifestyles and diets, among other advantages.