Do Enzymes Affect The Pigment In The Eye Of Drosophila

Abstract: Enzymes help determine a phenotype through proteins. The experiment presented tests how enzymes affect the pigment in the eye of Drosophila. What was resulted in this experiment is that when certain enzymes change, a mutation is created, causing the change of pigments in the different Drosophila’s eyes. The production of one enzyme is one gene and a mutation of this gene can cause an enzyme to be inactive which leads to the phenotype changing.
Introduction: George W. Beadle and Edward L. Tatum discovered that DNA controls the synthesis of enzymes which in turn regulates cellular chemical reactions while working with the mold Neurospora in the 1940’s1. The production of one enzyme is one gene and a mutation of this gene can cause an enzyme to become inactive which leads to phenotypes changing. This experiment will test how enzymes affect the pigments
It will help determine how certain changes in an enzyme can create different pigments compared to a pigment that is resulted from having no mutations. If enzymes determine the pigment in the eye of Drosophila and we test different Drosophila with different eye pigments and run them through chromatography then there will be a difference in the pigments present between each Drosophila.
Procedures: The equipment that is needed to conduct this experiment is a 15x20 cm rectangle of Whatman No. 1 filter paper, an etherizer, ether, a vial of fruit flies, petri dishes, a razor blade, a glass rod, a dissecting microscope, a 1000 ml jar, aluminum foil, solvent, and a UV light. What needs to be done first in the experiment is that predictions need to be made on the effect of the enzyme mutations on the concentration of each pigment (white, brown, rosy, scarlet, and sepia) compared to the wild type which has no mutations using the “current model of the pteridine and ommochrome pathways.1” Next, the filter paper needs to be marked. In pencil, a line 2 cm from the bottom needs