Fruit Fly Experiment

4 Pages 977 Words

The common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, used by Thomas Hunt Morgan in the early 1900’s to study genes and their relation to chromosomes, is a popular species used in genetic experiments due to its ability to lay down hundreds of eggs after just one mating, and their ability to mature in such rapid time, which is that of two weeks or less. The life cycle of the fruit fly consist of four specific stages: The first stage is the egg, which then hatches to reveal the larva, during this stage growth and molting occur, once growth is complete, the fruit fly enters its pupa state, where it develops into an adult through metamorphosis. Once maturity occurs, the flies are ready to mate and produce the next generation of fruit flies.
During this experiment, monohybrid crosses were conducted with the fruit fly, our objective was to examine the inheritance from one generation to the next. By collecting data from the crosses and analyzing them according to our expected results, which were hand picked and hidden by the teacher in charge.

MATERIALS & METHODS
Being given a plastic vial with a glucose media full of larva and foam stopper at the end, the flies remained there for maturity and mating. The monohybrid cross we used was that of a P1 generation, which resulted from the mating of a male heterozygous normal-body-color fly (Nn) and a female heterozygous normal-body-color fly (Nn). Males and females are distinguished by differences in body shape and size. Males have a darker and rounder abdomen in comparison to females, which are more pointed. Another difference occurs on the forelegs of the flies, males have a small bump called sex combs. The fruit flies were allowed to incubate and reproduce for a couple of days. after being anaesthetized by fly-nap, several number of flies were identified under a light microscope by removing them from the plastic vial which held them together, the vial remained on it’s side until the ...