Drosophila Melanogaster: Fruit Flies

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Drosophila melanogaster, commonly known as fruit flies, is commonly used as a model organism in chromosomal genetic studies of inheritance. The reason they are considered an attractive organism is because their genome has been widely studied and mutations have been found to be present in every locus. Also, their generation time is only two weeks, obtaining a large sample size is easy, and their cultures are cheap to maintain (Plunkett and Yampolsky, 2010). Additionally, a complete lifecycle of Drosophila only takes 10 days through four distinct stages (Arbeitman, Furlong, Imam, Johnson, Null, Baker and White, 2002). This species begin their life as an egg, which a naked human eye cannot see. The larva soon hatches from the egg, molts twice …show more content…

In the pupa stage the eyes, wings, and legs become visible. After 4 days in the pupa stage, the adult Drosophila will emerge and will appear as a light white color, after a few hours they will darken and the Drosophila’s features will become more visible (Arbeitman, et al., 2002). Once the Drosophila is an adult, it is able to mate with other Drosophila. When mating Drosophila, it is crucial to start the parental cross with virgin females in order to obtain accurate results (Menon, Varma and Sharma, 2014). This is because female Drosophila have the ability to store sperm for a lifetime, therefore if female virgins are not used, it is impossible to know for sure the type of male gamete the female would give to her offspring. With that being said, all adult Drosophila must be cleared out of the culture vial before the pupa hatch. After the first pupa emerges, the Drosophila can only be scored up to 2 weeks to prevent the risk of scoring the wrong generation (Menon, et al., …show more content…

The wild-type and mutant stock vial were anesthetized and 7 wild-type virgin females and 7 mutant males were added to a new culture vial. In a different culture vial, 7 mutant virgin females and 7 wild-type males were added.
Analysis of F1 and F1 Self Cross
The Drosophila was anesthetized and the F1 cross corresponding to the wild-type female x mutant male parental cross was created with 7 winged females and 7 winged males. The F1 cross corresponding to the mutant female x wild-type male parental cross, was also created with 7 winged females and 7 winged males. The F1 generation of each parental cross was scored until 100 flies were counted for each vial. All excess Drosophila was disposed of in the fly morgue.
Analysis of F2
The F2 generation of each F1 cross was anesthetized and scored until 100 flies were counted from each vial. All of the Drosophila was then disposed of in the fly morgue.
Chi-Square

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