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Fruit Fly Lab Report

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Drosophila melanogaster may just be small little fruit flies that feed on rotten fruit but this little creature happens to be one of the most valuable organisms in understanding genetic research. The D. melanogaster are commonly used in studying genetic traits because they are useful, small and have an extremely short life cycle (6). Our experiment shows precisely how D. melanogaster are used to identify mechanisms of transmission genetics in eukaryotes. Simple parental crosses were done to obtain both F1 and F2 generations. This was done so we could determine if the apterous (a wingless phenotype) and the sepia (dark brown) eye color of the fruit flies follows Mendelian inheritance or not. Our F1 generation displayed all offspring with red-eyes and wings; which follows Mendel’s principles. Our hypothesis is that our experiment will follow the classic inheritance patterns because the sepia traits and the wing traits display a dominant/recessive pattern in the D. melanogaster (4). If our hypothesis is correct, then we predict to see an entire F1 generation of red eyed fruit flies with wings and an F2 generation of 9 normal …show more content…

This value increases our overall experiment value and when compared to the Chi Square Chart, our Chi Square value is greater than the 7.81 value meaning that we should reject our hypothesis which was that our experiment would fit the 9:3:3:1 ratio. Our data didn’t fit the 9:3:3:1 ratio but was very close to it. There may have been some error in counting the flies and mistaking the color of the eyes as well as the wings. Also, some of the fruit flies got stuck in the media, some escaped by flying away, and others were handled roughly (torn apart) so therefore we were unable to count one hundred percent of the flies produced which could have also thrown off our

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