INTRODUCTION TO DROSOPHILA GENETICS
DROSOPHILA CULTURE We will study basic principles of Mendelian inheritance with the use of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster [the name means “black-bodied fruit-lover”]. Drosophila was one of the first organisms to be studied genetically: its small size, short life cycle (10 ~14 days at 25oC), high reproductive rate (an adult female can lay 400-500 eggs in 10 days), and ease of culture and genetic manipulation have made it perhaps the best understood animal genetic system. Many different species, and a large number and wide variety of naturally-occurring and artificially-induced genetic variants are available. The partial genetic map in Appendix B describes the location of all the mutations used in
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Thus, the genotype of a wild-type homozygote would be designated e +e + (or ++), a mutant homozygote ee, and a heterozygote e +e or e+ [Use of the term “wild-type” derives from an early assumption that most flies are homozygous for a ‘standard’, usually dominant, allele. As we will see, this is not the case, but the terminology is still used]. It is important to remember that not all mutants are recessive. A mutation that is dominant to the wild-type is symbolized by a capital letter. For example, the typical eye shape is round. One mutant produces a narrow “bar eye”: the allele is dominant, symbolized by a capital letter B, and the wild-type (round) eye is B+.
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GENETIC CROSSES An “X” is used to indicate that two individuals have been mated together. The parents are designated as P (for parental) and the offspring as F (for filial). When several generations are involved, subscripts are added to designate the generations. P1 give rise to F1 (first filial) progeny. If the F1 are crossed together they become P2 and their progeny F2. A cross between members of the F1 and members of the P1 is a backcross. A cross between members of the F1 and the true breeding recessive P1 is a test cross. MONOHYBRID CROSS The simplest form of a cross is a monohybrid cross, which analyses a single trait and its associated variations. The diagram below shows the
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.
parent carried the b allele. The F1 offspring of such a cross would be Bb, and
This Punnet Square represents the F1 offspring breeding with each other to create more offspring. This second set of offspring is the F2 generation. If both parents are heterozygous dominant, then the offspring expected would be: 50% heterozygous dominant, 25% homozygous dominant and 25% homozygous recessive.
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.
The conducted experiment assists in determining an unknown mutant allele found in Drosophila melanogatser. Mutant 489 illustrates a defect in eye pigmentation, which displays a dark brown eye color verses the brick red eyes in wild type flies. Based on the appearance our 489 mutation we've names our mutant rust.
The motivation of this lab report is to use Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance to analyze and predict the genotypes and phenotypes of an offspring generation (F2) after knowing the genotypes and phenotypes of the parent generation (F1). The hypothesis for this experiment is that the mode of inheritance for the shaven bristle allele in flies is autosomal recessive in both male and female flies.
Now you have determined some facts about the grounded allele and the trait that it causes. Given what you know, do you expect the mutant F1 flies to be homozygous or heterozygous for the allele that causes the grounded trait? According to your reasoning, if you mated two mutant F1 flies, what percentage of flies would you expect to be wild type versus mutant in the F2 progeny? Draw a Punnett square of this cross to justify your answer.
There were eight different phenotypes among the progeny. The highest phenotypic frequency was the w+m+f+ at 40% of the progeny. The lowest was the w+mf+ with only 2 % of the progeny (Table 3). The sum of the recombinant frequencies between genes, table 4, was used to determine the gene distance. The recombinant frequency was determined by counting the number of individuals whose genes differed from that of the parental type. For example, how many individuals white eye gene, and miniature wing gene, differed from both wild-type or both mutants. Recombination occurred between the white and miniature gene 33 times. Recombination occurred between the miniature and the forked genes 31 times. Recombination occurred between the white and forked genes 44 time. Double recombination occurred 10 times. Therefore, genes w and f are 64 m.u. apart, m and w are 33 m.u. apart, and m and f are 31 m.u. apart (Figure
Table 2 shows the phenotypes of the F1 flies produced by crossing P1 wild-type males and P1 no-winged females. The results of that cross was that there was fifty nine wild-type females and forty one males. Therefore there was a total of one hundred wild-type flies produced from crossing P1 true breeding wild-type males and P1 true breeding virgin
There were some sources of error in crossing between certain traits, specifically in determining the genotypes of the organisms being crossed. For example, there was no method of determining whether the wild type flies were homozygous dominant or heterozygous. The method used seemed reliable, but due to the questionable results, it may be more effective to find another
Genetics shows us that we inherit traits in many different ways. A perfect example to show us the different ways we inherit traits is fruit flies. Fruit flies are commonly used by scientists to conduct genetic experiments due to their reaction to the experiment being very quick. Scientists mainly look at how the flies inherit basic traits such as brown body color, or red eyes(basic trait flies are known as wild-type flies) from their parents, but sometimes they can come across some abnormal traits. Some of these abnormal traits include having a yellow body color or having curly shaped wings and have made scientists wonder how the flies have inherited these specific traits. So how do the flies inherit
The Drosophila melanogaster is a fruit fly with a very short life cycle. They can be winged or wingless, and have red eyes or white eyes. The different options are called alleles. Alleles are the variants of a specific gene, and one is received from each parent on each chromosome. (“What Are Dominant and Recessive?”). It was chosen to use winged females and wingless males to predict the offspring in this experiment. The winged allele is dominant, meaning it only needs one allele to physically appear. The wingless allele is recessive, which gets covered up by the dominant allele (“Fruit Fly Genetics”). Each trait has two alleles in the flies’
For our first generation (F1) of flies we chose to cross apterous (+) females and white-eye (w) males. We predicted that the mutation would be sex linked recessive. So if the female was the sex with the mutation then all females would be wild type heterozygous. Heterozygous is a term used when the two genes for a trait are opposite. The males would all be white eye since they only have one X chromosome. If the males were the sex that had the mutation then all the flies would be wild type but the females would be heterozygous.
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.