Drosophila Melanogaster Lab or Fruit Flies

Abstract

To start with, this is one of the Drosophila Melanogaster lab report essays. Drosophila melanogaster is commonly known as fruit flies. D. melanogaster are commonly found on fruits, vegetables, garbage bags, and moist rags. D. melanogaster reproduces in moist conditions and surfaces. D. melanogaster’s life cycle takes about 11 to 12 days for eclosion, the action of coming out of the pupal case. Since, D. melanogaster takes relativity a short amount of time to become adults and reproduce therefore they are a good model organism. A model organism is relatively inexpensive, easy to culture, a simple organism that has research information about them, and has basic biological process. D. melanogaster is an awesome example of a eukaryotic model organism that has been used for research about heredity, human genetics and developmental processes. D. melanogaster is a good size to be able to see phenotypes under a microscope. D.melanogaster is used to analyze and understand the genetics being passed on from F1 to F2 generation of flies.

Introduction

Drosophila melanogaster’s development is influenced by temperature. If at 25 degrees Celsius than it takes about 9 days to reach adulthood. The life cycle of D. melanogaster is on day 0 the female lays their egg, day 1 the eggs hatch, day 2 first instar (phase between two periods of development of larva), day 3 second instar, day 5 third instar that takes two days, day 7 larvae roams and pupae formation perform, and on day 11-12 eclosion occurs. D. melanogaster is a model organism that has a life cycle that last about 2 weeks which is a good small amount time to understand their genetics of generation during the semester between the F1 and F2 generation. By using Mendelian Law of Random segregation and Mender’s law of independent assortment we can test and construct a monohybrid or dihybrid cross to identify the F1 flies and characterize the phenotypes of F2 generation.

Methods

The purpose of the experiment is to mate F1 flies to create F2 generation of flies and identify their phenotypes. The first steps performed was anesthetizing the flies from the vial by first creating 4 prepared vials with very moist food. To anesthetize the flies, they are put in the freezer for 4 minutes to calm the flies down. The anesthetizing chamber is used, and holes are created on the bottom in addition the plug with FlyNap is placed in the anesthetizing chamber. Then the anesthetizer vial is inverted in the anesthetizing chamber. Once the flies are anesthetizing, they are separated on an index card into male and female then place male and female flies into the four new prepared vials.

Results

The flies given were unable to anesthetized and were very active throughout the procedure this could have been due to the holes not being big enough for the FlyNap to go through and anesthetize the flies. There was only about 3 female and 1 male fly that we were able to isolate from the original vial. The other 3 vials had flies that were browed from group 1’s vial and those flies died which could have been due to too much FlyNap used during anesthetizing. The anesthetizing was performed again with the original vial of the flies the next week and the flies were added to the vials once the deceased flies were removed. The flies are now matting and will soon have more flies in the vials.

Bibliography

• Binns, Corey. “Where Do Fruit Flies Come From?” LiveScience, Purch, 18 Nov. 2012
• Pamela Padilla, and Arland Alberts. University of North Texas BIOLOGY 3452/Genetics Laboratory Manual Spring 2019.