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Fruit Fly Lab Report

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Introduction
The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, became an important model organism for the study of human genetics and for the establishment of more biological principles (Roberts 2006). This organism became a good candidate to work with because of its short life cycle, its inexpensiveness, small size, its genetic variability, easily cultured and its ability to produce many offspring. Nichols and Phandey made an important discovery: approximately 75% of disease-causing genes in humans are homologous to genes found in Drosophila melanogaster (Russell and Tickoo). This is an important observation, because it made it possible to discover treatments for human diseases. For example, the fly has a tumor gene homologous to the human LATS1 gene. …show more content…

Both males and females are affected with this gene, making it autosomal. This mutation results in a light brown-pigmented eye instead of the red wild type eye. This is due to the lack of pigments in the eye that would normally give rise to the wild type eye color (Lloyd 1998). The eye color darkens when the fly starts to age. Although, this mutation primarily affects the eye color, it also changes other parts of the body. For example, the malphigian tubules are a pale yellow. The fly’s testes and vasa become colorless during their adulthood. A possible chromosomal effect on phenotype occurs when alleles are recessive. When these homozygous recessive alleles are present in a fly, they are …show more content…

The mutagen of this allele is spontaneous and results in a yellow-brown eye, which varies, from the regular brown eye in the mutation. After a couple days the eye darkens into a garnet color. Testes remain colorless, and the malphigian tubules are pale yellow. Smaller pigment granules are observed in the mutant. This allele is dominant and in chromosome 2. Additionally, the nature of the lesion is caused by the insertion of the 412-transposable element in the molecular structure of the gene in DNA. Besides affecting the eye color, it also creates a decreased sensitivity to chemical’s toxic effects in comparison to the wild type. These toxic effects include inebriation, sedation, sustained damage, developmental defects and death (Campbell and Nash,

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