The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a well established model organism, widely used in various areas of biological research.In the past 10 years we adopted Drosophila as a new platform for systematic metal studies.I will briefly summarize what we have done recently regarding zinc and iron homeostasis in Drosophila, and metals roles in several kinds of neurodegenerations.I will use our work on tauopathy (tau toxicity) as an example to exemplify the principle of how to use the fruit fly to address a complicated problem and add to our understanding of this important issue.