Fruit Flies Biology

1. Model organisms are species that are studied to understand the biology of other organisms, usually humans. Fruit flies share 75% of the genes that cause certain diseases with humans. Therefore scientists can learn about human genetics by studying fruit fly genetics. This falls under the bigger principle of understanding the basic biology that all organisms have in common. Common fruit flies like Drosophila are useful when studying genetics for several reasons, such as their small size that makes them easy to utilize in genetics experiments, they are low “Low Maintenance Creatures”. The small size of the flies allows us to separate and study them individually. Their small size (only a few millimeters long) however not too small that they
Since the male and female Drosophila are different (Dimorphic) it is easier to distinguish the sexes as well as the virgin males and females, due to the physical differences that occur as they become adults. The short generation time (10-12 days at 25degrees) fruit flies have is essential to use them as a model organism, where they produce a large amount of breeding data over a relatively short period of time. Also the complete genome of Drosophila was sequenced and published in the year 2000.
2. In order to utilize fruit flies in experiments several techniques with multiple steps are have been developed. The techniques and steps used for this experiment involved: anesthetizing flies, where carbon dioxide is used for keeping the flies static for relatively long periods of time with no side effects. Transferring flies from one vial to another is done by placing a funnel in the top of a new vial containing madia, then gently tapping the old vial so the flies fall to the bottom of the vial. Once the flies are the bottom of the vial remove the plug off and invert the vial into the prepared vial with funnel.
Only virgin female fruit flies are necessary for scientific study. Using female fruit flies that have previously mated may result in mixed offspring, which leads to inaccurate experiment results.
5. In the sex linked cross of Drosophila Melanogaster, I expect to see a phenotypic ratio of 1:1 and a genotype of 3:1 to be obtained.
6. For this experiment we are testing Mendel’s principle of segregation which states that “during the formation of reproductive cells (gametes), pairs of hereditary factors (genes) for a specific trait separate so that offspring receive one factor from each