A Conversation With Michael R. Rose In the 1970's, Michael R. Rose made scientific history with experiments manipulating the life spans of fruit flies. Through selective breeding, Dr. Rose was able to create a long-lived line of creatures he called Methuselah flies. He then put his research into reverse and developed flies with much shortened life spans. All this was accomplished within 12 generations by accelerating the evolutionary processes in a laboratory setting. These days Dr. Rose, who is 50, breeds fruit flies at the University of California, Irvine, where he is a professor of evolutionary biology. From there, he...