Preview

Drosophila Melanogaster Lab Report

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1290 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Drosophila Melanogaster Lab Report
Introduction
In most kitchens the small flies that are found are Drosophila Melanogaster also called fruit fly. They are often brought in by ripened tomatoes, grapes and other perishable items from the garden. Drosophila melanogaster is a little two winged insect about 3mm long two winged insect that belongs to the Diptera, the order of the flies. The drosophila egg is about half a millimeter long. Fertilization takes about one day the embryo to develop and hatch into a worm-like larva. The larva eats and grows continuously, after two days as a third in star larva; it moults one more time to form an immobile pupa. Over the next four days, the body is completely remodeled to give the adult winged form, which then hatches from the pupal case and is fertile within about 12 hours. Fruit fly has four pairs of chromosomes: the X/Y sex chromosomes and the autosomes 2, 3, and 4. the fourth chromosome is very tiny and rarely heard from. The size of the genome is about 165 million bases and contains and estimated 14,000 genes (by comparison, the human genome has 3,400 million bases and may have about 22,500 genes; yeast has about 5800 genes in 13.5 million base bases). The genome has been completely sequenced and analysis of the data is now mostly complete.
Fruit fly is a most commonly used model organism in studies such as genetics, biology, physiology and life history evolution. It is so useful because it is very small and easy to grow in the laboratory. It has a short generation time about two weeks and a high productivity. The mature larvae show giant chromosomes in the salivary glands. Drosophila has been used as a model organism for research for almost a century, and today. Part of the reason people work on it is because it is a small animal, with a short life cycle of just two weeks, and is cheap and easy to keep large numbers. Mutant flies, with defects in any of several thousand genes are available, and the entire genome has recently been sequenced. Fruit flies

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In addition to wild-type flies, 29 different mutations of the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, are included in FlyLab. The 29 mutations are actual known mutations in Drosophila. These mutations create phenotypic changes in bristle shape, body color, antennae shape, eye color, eye shape, wing size, wing shape, wing vein structure, and wing angle. For the purposes of the simulation, genetic inheritance in FlyLab follows Mendelian principles of complete dominance. Examples of incomplete dominance are not demonstrated with this simulation. A table of the mutant phenotypes available in FlyLab can be viewed by clicking on the Genetic Abbreviations tab which appears at the top of the FlyLab homepage. When you select a particular phenotype, you are not provided with any information about the dominance or recessiveness of each mutation. FlyLab will select a fly that is homozygous for the particular mutation that you choose, unless a mutation is lethal in the homozygous condition in which case the fly chosen will be heterozygous. Two of your challenges will be to determine the zygosity of each fly in your cross and to determine the effects of each allele by analyzing the offspring from your…

    • 862 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    color (e), mutation in wing morphology (w). A controlled cross was performed between a true-breeding fly with the…

    • 1584 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fruit Fly Lab Report

    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Drosophila melanogaster commonly known as the fruit fly is considered a model organism in the field of genetics because of its short life cycle of about 10 weeks and the ability of the fly to produce a relatively large number of offspring at 50-70 eggs per day upon female maturity. The physical size of the male and female Drosophila is approximately 2.5 to 3 mm respectively Drosophila allowing for minimal storage space in a laboratory setting. The intricate nervous system of the fruit fly has made them very vital to genetic research in nervous system disorders and cancer research (Klug, 12).…

    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Lab 6 Drophisila Fly

    • 3603 Words
    • 17 Pages

    Drosophila melanogaster are very useful tool in the study of genetics. The gene studied is called apterous, with recessive allele producing very tiny wings and the dominant allele of the same gene leading to wild type wing structure. In this experiment we are hoping to determine phenotypic ratios and dominant vs. recessive traits by cross breeding two different types of Drosophila; such as wild type mutant (red eye) with white eye drosophila and wild type mutant (red eye) with sepia eye drosophila. . Drosophila are most commonly used organism in genetic labs because they have a short life span and genetically speaking they are a very simple organism. The mode of inheritance among traits is easy to figure out as well by applying simple Mendelian tools in this…

    • 3603 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    1. In fruit flies, long wings are dominant to short wings. Complete a cross between a short winged male and a heterozygous female.…

    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Fruit Fly Lab Report

    • 1270 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The fruit fly or Drosophila melanogaster is ideal for classroom experiments. They are inexpensive, easy to nap, breed, as well as observe. It was very important to be able to tell the male and female flies apart from one another. The males are known to be usually smaller in size than the female flies and have bristles on their forelegs while the females lack this appearance. Also the males have a black or dark round end whereas the females have striped pointy ends. The Drosophila flies are small have dark red eyes and have a yellow-brown body. These flies are able to mutate within approximately ten to fourteen days at twenty-five degrees Celsius. The Drosophila has a…

    • 1270 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fruit Fly Lab Report

    • 602 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In this lab a study of fruit fly genetics was done these creature are readily used for genetic studies .they are easy to maintain. And the females lay a lot off eggs which develop in about two weeks. Fruit fly’s have for distinct stages, the egg, larva, pupa and adult. the egg and larva stages last for eight days, the pupal stage last for six days and then the adult stage which last for many weeks this period of growth is called instars. In this lab a dihybrid cross was performed to get data results and to draw a conclusion to the hypothesis.…

    • 602 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    THE AP EURO DBQ

    • 555 Words
    • 2 Pages

    **You still have to know the basics of fruit fly behavior, so be sure to read the lab carefully and save the lab handout to study later for the AP Exam.…

    • 555 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This experiment was conducted to study the relative fitness of two phenotypes of the Drosophila melanogaster and how fitness can affect evolution in the population. The phenotypes were placed in two different environments, one in which contained a predator and another with no predator. Results of the experiment would show how the fitness of each phenotype is affected by providing a mechanism, and if evolution was occurring in the population. Two hypotheses were inferred, one for each environment. For the cage uninfluenced by a predator, we hypothesized that evolution would occur due to sexual selection, and that sexual selection would be in favor of the wild-type drosophila. For the cage containing the predator, we hypothesized that the vestigial flies would have a higher relative fitness due to natural selection. A ratio of wild-type to vestigial flies was determined, and was set up in each environment. 10 wild-type to 40 vestigial flies was chosen, giving a total of 50 flies for each environment. Each week the flies were fed, and every two weeks they were counted to represent a new generation. At the end of the 13 week experiment, the last generation of flies were counted and recorded in a data table. The results of the experiment show that evolution was occurring in both cages, and that wild type flies were dominant regardless of the environment.…

    • 3289 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Fruit Fly Lab Report

    • 2526 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Drosophila melanogaster or more commonly referred to as “fruit flies” have been used for genetic research for over 100 years. During his time at Harvard university, Charles W. Woodworth is credited with being the first to suggest fruit flies be used for genetic research. A century later, fruit flies are the most widely used eukaryotic organism for genetic research (Drosophila). Their ease of use and rapid rate of reproduction has allowed researchers across the globe further our knowledge of genetics.…

    • 2526 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Drosophila, or the fruit fly, is an ideal organism for many laboratory studies. It can easily be observed in a confined space and two flies can reproduce hundreds of offspring. The most important thing about studying fruit flies, however, is the ease with which inherited traits can be observed in them. Heritable traits are those that are expressed in organisms due to genes passed down to them by their parents. The genes can be carried on either the autosomes or the sex chromosomes. The traits themselves can be either dominant or recessive, and are referred to physically as phenotypes and genetically as genotypes. (Hurney, Pesce, Babcock 2005) If one cannot determine the genotype…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Mexican fruit fly, Anastrepha ludens, is characterized by its yellow to brown body and wing coloration (3).( Refer to the picture in the left (10)) An adult fruit fly is 7-11 mm long and is a bit larger than a house fly (3). An adult fly may live up to 11 months and can lay more than 1,500 eggs in its life. It’s a serious pest…

    • 911 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The X/Y sex chromosomes and the 2,3,4, autosomes. It is important to know the differences between the two adult sexes in order to record and collect the data accurately. The major sexual differences in Drosophila are apparent in the abdominal segment of the flies. In males, the last abdominal segment of the male is much larger and rounded than that in the female. Another indicator is the presence of sex combs present in males. Male flies has a small, densely packed bristles call sex comb on the outer joints of both forelegs. Females lack sex combs. Therefore, if one sees sex combs on a fly, it is certain that the fly is a male. Female fruit flies remain virgins for approximately six hours after hatching but will mate after the six hour window. It is important for the female flies to be virgin, so one knows which fly genotypes are…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Fruit Fly Lab Report

    • 1348 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Looking at all of the fruit flies, there is no possible way for the parent flies to be homozygous. If the parent flies were homozygous, both the F1 and the F2 phenotypes would be the same holding a 1:1ratio, instead of the 9:3:3:1 ratio that was observed. The purpose of this experiment was to determine the F1 genotype of fruit fly traits using the phenotypic ratio of the F2 generation and to express these results of the unknown cross through a Chi-square model. After taking data with the Chi-squared value of 5.64, the degrees of freedom were 3 and the p-value was between .05 and .2, it is confident to fail to reject the null hypothesis, which leads the experimenters to believe that the observed phenotypic ratio does significantly deviate from that expected under the assumption of Mendelian inheritance. In the future, exploring more complex animals other than fruit flies, such as mammals or reptiles, would make this experiment a little more difficult, but more interesting as well. Without Mendelian genetics, it would be much more difficult to predict traits in organisms across the living…

    • 1348 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Fruit Fly Lab Report

    • 1490 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Drosophila melanogaster is a common fruit fly that has been useful for most experiments in the study of Genetics. The male and the female fruit fly are similar and different in regards to how they look, structurally. They are similar because both genders have a head, thorax, proboscis, antennae, eyes, and mouth parts. However, males are smaller than females and have about five abdominal segments as opposed to the seven that the female has. The life cycle of these fruit flies consist of egg, larvae, metamorphosis, and then adult stages. During the egg stage of their life cycle, the eggs are sunk into the food until they become larvae that spend all of their time eating. After, the larvae go through two molting phases called instars,…

    • 1490 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays