Fruit Fly Research Papers

The experiment was performed on February 2nd 2016 at the University of Calgary in a Biological Science laboratory. The experimental procedure was done in a group of four students.

In this experiment we tested to see what the offspring of an unknown cross of an F1 generation would produce. After observing the F2 generation and recording the data we found some of the Drosophila showed mutations, two in particular. The mutations were the apterus wings, and sepia eyes. After collecting our data through observation, a Chi-test was conducted resulting in a Chi-value of 5.1 and a p-value of .2. Since the p-value was greater than 0.05, there was no significant change in the data. This proved that the Drosophila flies still followed the Mendelian genetics of a 9:3:3:1 ratio.

This may have been the cause of the low numbers of white lozenge in the F2 generation of flies. However, the cause of white eyes is a defective red pigment gene and should not affect the vision of the flies, whereas the lozenge gene should have a greater affect due to it causing the malformation of the fly's eyes. Therefore the lozenge flies should have also been in lower than expected numbers, but it was found that they were actually in higher than expected numbers making the validity of this argument questionable.

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.

Drosophila Melanogaster, commonly known as fruit flies, are highly important model organisms in pertaining to biological research. The logic behind their recurrent use is due to their: easy culture in the laboratory, brief generation time, and ability to produce large numbers of offspring. In this report, we created isolated virgin D. Melanogaster from the original three populations we were given and then created crosses between them. Upon observation, we noticed an unusual mutant that arose from two of the three created crosses. We suspected that this genetic mutation had previously been discovered and named.

MacKay JO, Soanes KH, Srivastava A, Simmonds A, Brook WJ, Bell JB. An in vivo analysis of the vestigial gene in Drosophila melanogaster defines the domains required for Vg function. Genetics. 2003;163(4):1365-1373.

Purpose The purpose of this experiment is to determine whether the fruit flies were dominant/recessive or linked/non-linked. The traits I chose for this activity was the fruit fly with vestigial wings and purple eyes, the other fruit fly I chose was a normal fly, also called wild type. While writing out my plan for this activity I thought it would be interesting to test a female mutant and the wild type male, the ratios I came up for this experiment was 2:2 and the mutant allele being recessive to the wild type. In this case, the words recessive and dominant means, if the child born from the parents inherits more of the genes and traits from let us say the father then the alleles of the father is dominant over the mother’s genes.

Fruit Fly experiment was conducted by using different techniques. One of the main things was to examine the fruit flies and identify the difference between females and males, identify their mutation if they were wild type, white eye, vestigial or white and vestigial combined together. These Fruit flies were kept in the incubator at 25°C for about 6 days. The main goal for this experiment was to observe the principles of Mendelian genetics.

Introduction For centuries, researchers have used Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, to study genetics. The benefits of using the fruit fly includes: its relatively short generation time, its large amount of available offspring for data, it is easy to store and handle in the laboratory and it is easily and cheaply obtained. Cross-breeding of four types of fruit flies were used in this experiment including: wild type males with normal wings vs. vestigial wing females, wild type males with red eyes vs. white eyed females, wild type male with red eyes vs. sepia eyed females, and wild type males vs. wild type females. In basic mendelian genetics, the terms dominant, recessive and sex-linked are used to describe the different types

Introduction: Drosophila is the name given to a genus of small flies within the family, Drosophilidae. They are commonly referred to as fruit flies or pomace flies. They have historically been called vinegar or wine flies due to the fact that they commonly gather around rotting fruit. The fruit fly is sometimes mistaken for the Tephritidae family of flies which is closely related and is even sometimes referred to as the true fruit fly however; tephritids tend to only feed on unripe fruit, and have been regarded as destructive agricultural pests. For instance, the Mediterranean fruit fly has devastated the agricultural economy sector of several Mediterranean countries millions of dollars in ruined crops.

The most extensive metamorphic changes of insects internal organs occur with development of the thoracic musculature required for flight, the arrangement of nervous system and the development of gonads [2].

Introduction Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, established the basic principles of heredity by crossing different varieties of pea plants and observing the succession of traits in the resulting generations. In order to studying the trends of heredity, model organisms are crossed and observed for the resulting traits. Drosophilia melanogaster, the fruit fly, has been a useful species in the study and practice of genetics. The fruit fly is an excellent model organism due to its short generation time, large offspring numbers, simply and cheap care, easy handling in a lab setting, and large and varied stocks available with minimum cost. It was among the first organisms to be used for genetic analysis (Pierce, 2005).

This experiment looks at the relationship between genes, generations of a population and if genes are carried from one generation to another. By studying Drosophila melanogaster, starting with a parent group we crossed a variety of flies and observe the characteristics of the F1 generation. We then concluded that sex-linked genes and autosomal genes could indeed be traced through from the parent generation to the F1 generation.

Cristae are structures in the mitochondria of a cell that are studded with ATP and other proteins involved in the electron transport chain. If the number of cristae in a mitochondrion of a cell is increased, the cell has more energy and is more metabolically active, and this is an indicator of slowed ageing processes and increased cell survival. Drosophila melanogaster, commonly known as a fruit fly, is a great model to study ageing due to the fact that their lifetime is only about 2 months and after 1 month they start to age. Also, scientists have sequenced the entire genome of Drosophila melanogaster which showed very close similarity to the human genome. Furthermore, fruit flies are easy and cheap to grow, they reproduce prolifically, and have been successfully used in the past to conduct studies on ageing.