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Inheritance Of Traits Of Fruit Flies

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Inheritance of Traits in Fruit Flies

Genetics shows us that we inherit traits in many different ways. A perfect example to show us the different ways we inherit traits is fruit flies. Fruit flies are commonly used by scientists to conduct genetic experiments due to their reaction to the experiment being very quick. Scientists mainly look at how the flies inherit basic traits such as brown body color, or red eyes(basic trait flies are known as wild-type flies) from their parents, but sometimes they can come across some abnormal traits. Some of these abnormal traits include having a yellow body color or having curly shaped wings and have made scientists wonder how the flies have inherited these specific traits. So how do the flies inherit …show more content…

The next row(F2 generation), shows us the offspring numbers of a male and female from the F1 generation. Those numbers give us a ratio of 1:1:1:1 of 1 wild male to 1 yellow male to 1 female wild to 1 female yellow. This tells us that there is around the same amount offspring for of each type of fly in the F2 generation.

Table 2: Yellow Male x Wild-Type Female
Generation
Male Wild
Male Yellow
Female Wild
Female Yellow
P1
0
1
1
0
F1
52
0
57
0
F2
88
43
114
0

This next table follows a similar skeleton as the one before. The table gives us an outcome for when we cross the two parents with each other, and then gives us another outcome by crossing another male and female from the F1 generation(the first offspring) which creates the F2 generation. So if we look at the numbers for the F1 generation, we can get about a 2:2 ratio of 2 wild males to 2 wild females. Then, if we look at the F2 generation we get around a 1:1:2 ratio of 1 wild male to 1 yellow male to 2 female wild. So all of this data tells us that throughout all the generation, none of the offspring turned out to be female yellow.

Wild-type Male x Yellow Female
Cross: XY x XyXy

X
Y

Outcome:
Xy
XyX
XyY

- 2 wild female
Xy
XyX
XyY

- 2 yellow male

This Punnett square represents the offspring of a wild-type male and yellow female. The offspring outcomes of this square create a 2:2 ratio of 2 wild-type females to 2 yellow males. These outcomes correspond with

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