Drosophila Melanogaster Essay

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Yellow Body Mutants and Their Results in Drosophila melanogaster Introduction Drosophila melanogaster, also known as a fruit fly, is a small insect about 3mm long. It is commonly used in genetic experiments due to its variety in mutations, short life cycle of only two weeks, and effective cheap cost. Gender is reasonably easy to distinguish in this species. Reproduction is also very quick and produces large amounts of offspring. D. melanogaster can be divided into four stages: embryo, three larval stages, pupa, and adult. They can be mature for reproduction after 12 hours, and the female can store sperm from a sole insemination for the duration of her lifetime. For genetics purposes, geneticists employ the use of virgin female flies to get the best results. “Drosophila is used mostly in developmental biology, looking to see how a complex organism arises from a relatively simple fertilized egg. Embryonic development is where most of the attention is concentrated, but there is also a great deal of interest in how various adult structures develop into the pupa, mostly focused on the development of the compound eye, but also on the wings, legs, and other organs” (Manning 2008). D. melanogaster is a great example to understand Mendel’s law of inheritance. Mendel’s Law of Segregation states that all individuals carry two alleles, which can be dominant or recessive. Mendel’s second law, the Law of Independent Assortment, states that genes assort independently of each other (Cummings 2010). In this species, mutations can be targeted to specific genes. Two crosses can be performed: monohybrid or dihybrid. Monohybrid crosses are those involving only one character. Dihybrid crosses are those involving two characters in which the parents possess different traits of each character. Drosophila has four pairs of chromosomes: X/Y sex chromosomes and autosomes 2, 3, and 4.

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