Drosophila melanogaster commonly known as a fruit fly is an oviparous animal with a short generation time of approximately two weeks, during this time the insect hatches into a larva and goes through the developmental larval instar stages, and finally evolves into an adult fly. This species has become an important resource for biologists to better understand different organisms, such as other insects, and even humans. By understanding a simple living organism such as a fruit fly, researchers have been able to comprehend more complex organisms and their behaviors, brain processes, development and other important details. Some examples of the previous research done on this species have provided information about the sense organs in animals
The basis of genetics were established by Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk in the mid to late 1800’s. Through the observations from cross-pollinating pea plants, Mendel was able to discover the basic laws of inheritance. Years later genetics would be studied on a multitude of organisms, some more than others. Drosophila melanogaster or the common fruit fly has been studied in depth for its great advantages, such as size, reproduction rate, ease of care and inexpensive room and board.
Drosophila melanogaster is a small, common fly found near unripe and rotted fruit. It has been in use for over a century to study genetics. Thomas Hunt Morgan was the best biologist studying Drosophila early in the 1900’s. Morgan was the first to discover sex-linkage and genetic recombination, which placed the small fly in the forefront of genetic research. Scientists have used Drosophila for many reasons. For one they are very easy to maintain, breed, anesthetize, and kill with little equipment. They are also very small and it is easy to distinguish males vs females and sexually mature flies and virgins. At lastly, the flies have a very short two week life span. On days 2-7 of their life
Introduction: The intention of this lab was to gain a better understanding of Mendelian genetics and inheritance patterns of the drosophila fruit fly. This was tasked through inspecting phenotypes present in the dihybrid crosses performed on the flies. An experimental virtual fly lab assignment was also used to analyze the inheritance patterns. Specifically, the purpose of our drosophila crosses is to establish which phenotypes are dominant/recessive, if the traits are inherited through autosome or sex chromosomes and whether independent assortment or linkage is responsible for the expressed traits.
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Introduction Drosphila melanogaster, commonly known as the fruit fly, is an excellent organism for genetics studies because it has simple food requirements, occupies little space, is robust, completes its life cycle in about 12 days at room temperature, produces large numbers of offspring, can be immobilized readily for examination and sorting, and has many types of hereditary variations that can be observed with low-power magnification. The fruit fly has a small number of chromosomes (4 pairs), which are easily located in the large salivary gland cells. As mentioned before, the fruit fly life cycle is complete in about 12 days. First, a fertilized adult female must lay the egg, which leads to the first stage of the fruit fly life cycle, the egg stage.
Fruit flies with normal wings have a higher population and greatly outnumber the population of fruit flies with dichaete or vestigial wings.
Abstract Drosophila melanogaster have been tested on by scientists for over a hundred years. Research on these flies have come to be the foundation of genetic studies everywhere (“Drosophila melanogaster”). In this experiment two environments were created where wild type and vestigial Drosophila melanogaster reproduced over multiple generations. One environment has a simulated predator and the other does not.
The major topic of this experiment was to examine two different crosses between Drosophila fruit flies and to determine how many flies of each phenotype were produced. Phenotype refers to an individual’s appearance, where as genotype refers to an individual’s genes. The basic law of genetics that was examined in this lab was formulated by a man often times called the “father of genetics,” Gregor Mendel. He determined that individuals have two alternate forms of a gene, referred to as two alleles. An individual can me homozygous dominant (two dominant alleles, AA), homozygous recessive, (two recessive alleles, aa), or heterozygous (one dominant and one recessive
To start, a fly anesthetic was used named “FlyNap” to anesthetize the drosophila melanogaster. A fur wire was then dipped into the FlyNap and then placed into the vial with the vial on its side being careful not to uncork the foam plug. After about a minute the drosophila melanogaster become unconscious. The unconscious drosophila melanogaster are then swept onto a plate with a small paintbrush. Once they are on a plate they are then to be scored with a compound microscope. For the experiment five females and five males were required to be placed in vial with at the bottom of this vial were some parts dry fly food, mixed water, and granules of yeast. While keeping the vial sideways sliding a small portion of plastic netting and then
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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
For more than a century Drosophila Melanogaster has been one of the most intensely studied organisms in biology. Thanks to being sexually dimorphic, having short generation periods, a high fecundity, and only four pairs of chromosomes, Drosophila Melanogaster are exceptional model organisms (Roach et al, 2008). Drosophila Melanogaster broke into the forefront of biological research in the early 20th century, when Dr. Thomas Morgan, using Drosophila, founded contemporary genetics with major discoveries concerning sex-linked inheritance and phylogenetic impact of gene mutation (Metcalfe et al, 2013). Today Drosophila Melanogaster is a staple in classrooms and laboratories alike; serving as not only as an observable means of studying classic Mendelian genetics, but also a model organism for cutting edge medical and scientific research.
2. Six Sepias (3 males, 3 females) were added to both vials. Six Wildtypes (3 males, 3 females) were added to both vials. This was done by transferring them while they were FlyNapped. They were topped immediately after with the vial being placed on its side so the flies would not drown in their food when they woke up. These vials contained the parental generation.
The purpose of this conducting this lab is to see how the rocket can be changed physically to make it fly higher up after being launched. Not only is the rocket going to fly higher but also have to test to see if there is a way to thoroughly protect an egg after landing to keep it from cracking/breaking. Research on the average height a rocket flies based on the PSI used showed that the higher the PSI the higher it tends to fly.
The short life cycle of the Drosophila Melanogaster consists of four stages. Drosophila start off as an egg and quickly hatch into a larva (Flagg 8). During the larval stage, the immature fruit fly is constantly eating in order to consume enough nutrients to undergo its metamorphosis from pupa to adult. As the larva gets ready to pupate, its outer covering becomes hardened and darker in color. In this pupal case, its wormlike body will undergo metamorphosis. After about two days, the new adult emerges and looks for a mate to start the cycle again. Males can be distinguished from females from simple observations of the abdomen. Male Drosophila are generally smaller than the