Report on Drosophila

Investigation of the inheritance of the characteristics eye colour and wing size in Drosophila melanogaster and whether the alleles are dominant or recessive and sex-linked or autosome

Date: 01-01-2014
Students: Janneke Hummelink & Reinder Meinsma

Table of Contents

  * Theoretical background                                                                          
  * Introduction
  * Materials
  * Methods
  * Results
  * Conclusion
  * Discussion
  * Sources
  * Logbook

Theoretical background
For at least for the past 100 years, the drosophila melanogaster has been one of the most famous organism in biology research. We all know this little organism with the name fruit or vinegar fly and it can be found all over the world except on the extremes of altitude and latitude The fruit fly belongs to the family of drosophilae, which has more than 4,000 species.
The first stage of their life cycle is as an embryo of a female and male fly. Next up they grow into a first instar larva. These first, second and third instar larva live on rotting vegetable matter until they grow big enough and turn into prepupas. This is only the case if the embryos are born in nature, because in laboratories they are grown on a flour-based medium gelled on agar and seeded with baker’s yeast. After the prepupa stage they grow in real pupas, and after all they become male or female fruit flies. Then the whole process can start over again.
The main differences between male and female most of the time the size overall but more specifically are the abdomen. The tergits of the male are dark when we are looking at the males. Obviously, the tergits of the female are not. Also if we look at the forelegs, we can see that the males have a set of bristles and the females do again not have those. Last but not least we can still look at the genitals, but this can be hard to see. When you see an ‘egg’ popping out, you can be sure that this fly is female.

Introduction...