Drosophila Melanogaster Research Paper

Drosophila melanogaster, more commonly known as the fruit fly, is commonly used as a model organism in genetic research. Using D. melanogaster has a multitude of practical advantages for researchers. These include a fast reproduction cycle of approximately 30 days, small physical size, cost-effective culture and growth in large quantities, and a small genome size of 4 pairs of chromosomes. A basic understanding of the anatomy and genetics of D. melanogaster is necessary before preforming genetics experiments on this organism.
The basic anatomy of D. melanogaster is similar to that of most insects. The body can be divided into three main segments: the head, thorax, and abdomen (Figure 1). The head contains the antennae, compound eyes, and labellum.
melanogaster that are genetically determined are wing size and eye color. Two of the possible phenotypes for wing size are long wing or apterous (no wing), and two of the phenotypes for eye color are red eye and sepia (dark eye). In this paper, the gene for wing size will be denoted by a capital and lowercase A, where A = long wing and a = short wing. The letter B will be used to denote eye color, where B = red eye and b = sepia (dark eye). Both of these genes are known to be on separate loci, and are known to be on one of the autosomal chromosomes. Long wings are also known to be dominant to apterous (no wing), while red eyes are dominant to sepia. In additional, a sex-linked gene can switch the fruit fly from red eye to white eye. For this paper, X+ denotes the dominant red-eye allele on the X chromosome, while XW denotes the recessive white-eye allele on the X
melanogaster are crossed and mated. Strain D contains long-winged, red-eyed males and long-winged, sepia females, while Strain E contains long-winged white-eyed males and long-winged red-eye females. Based on the Mendelian law of independent assortment, assuming our two genes lie on separate chromosomes and thus separate independent of each other, we hypothesize that all the F1 generation will have an approximately 9:3:3:1 phenotypic distribution, where about 9/16 (56.25%) of F1 will have both dominant phenotypes, 3/16 (18.75%) will have one dominant and one recessive phenotype, 3/16 (18.75%) will have the opposite dominant and opposite recessive phenotypes, and 1/16 (6.25%) will have both recessive phenotypes. We will use statistical testing with the Chi squared test to determine if we get results that are significantly similar or different that these expected