Crossing Flies to Determine the Inheritance Pattern of Wing Type and Eye Color in Drosophila Melanogaster

Studying Fruit flies helps scientists understand biological phenomena that take place in other more complex organisms. For instance most of the non-Mendelian and simple Mendelian inheritance events that apply to Drosophila apply to other organisms including humans (Mudher/2008). According to Brooker (2009) in his book “Genetics Analysis and Principals” Heredity is the study of how traits are passed down from parents to offspring. Studying Heredity in Biology is called genetics (Klug/1997). In fact heredity is one factor that causes species to evolve because variations in individuals inherited from parents accumulate over time (Klug/1997). The study of how genes are passed from parents to offspring is readily researched and studied by biologists, and to accomplish this they use different resources including the Drosophila models (Mudher/2008).

The reason Drosophila was chosen to be studied and analyzed is because of its short life cycle (approximately 13 day), ease of handling, low cost , and because the laws of heredity that govern more complex organisms also govern the fruit flies (Demerec and Kaufmann/ 1997). The fruit fly has four basic stages in its life cycle: egg, larva, pupa, and adult (Demerec and Kaufmann/ 1997). It takes a total of about 2 weeks for a Drosophila to produce new adults: 24 hours in the fly (after male inseminates the fly to the time the fly lays the eggs), 2 days in the egg stage, about 7 in the larval stage, and six in the pupa stage (Demerec and Kaufmann/ 1997). In the first stage sperm is received from the male in their seminal receptacles which is used by the female to fertilize her eggs for her entire life (Demerec and Kaufmann/ 1997). The larva hatches from the eggs that were laid in about 24 hour...

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...ion will help determine if the genes are linked or unlinked. If after all the phenotypes are counted and recorded the data reveals that the parentals are greater than the non-parental and the calculation for the chi-square is to large then the genes are linked, so a map distance calculation will be executed to determine the distance between this linked genes.

Works Cited

Ashburner M. Drosophila A Laboratory Handbook. Cold Spring Harbor (NY): Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 1989. 1331 p.

Brooker R. 2009. Genetics Analysis & Principles. Third Ed. New York:McGraw-Hill.

Demerec M, Kaufmann B P. Drosophila Guide. Washington D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington; 1996. 46 p.

Flagg R . Carolina Drosophila Manual. Burlington (NC): Carolina Biological Supply Company; 2005. 35 p.

Klug W S. Concepts of genetics. Upper Saddle River (NJ): Prentice Hall; 1997.