Investigating Inheritance in Drosophila melanogaster The fruit fly, or the Drosophila melanogaster, was used in this experiment to study patterns of inheritance. It only takes a fruit fly 14 days to develop from an egg to an adult and then 12 hours before they become reproductive, so these factors made the fruit fly a good species to study, because we had enough time to do crosses. We were investigating the patterns of inheritance in the eye color and the wings. The wild type flies had red eyes and full wings, while the mutant phenotype had brown eyes and no wings. We also had to study the sexes of the flies. The male flies had darker abdominal tips and sex combs on both of their forearms. For the results, my group had predicted as follows:X-linkedX= dominant alleleX= recessive alleleXX x XY X-linked DominantThis would produce 100% of the dominant phenotype in females.This would produce 100% of the dominant phenotype in males.XX x XY X-linked RecessiveThis would produce 100% of the dominant phenotype in females with 50% carrying the recessive trait.This would produce 50% of the dominant phenotype in males and the other 50% of males would express the recessive trait.Autosomal DominanceA= dominant allelea= recessive alleleThis will result in a 100% dominant phenotype.MethodsWe had received 2 cultured bottles and added a few grains of yeast and some cool water. We had received wild type flies to sex and had to set up crosses with them. After anaesthetic that we used to put them to sleep, we emptied them onto a piece of white paper and viewed them under a dissecting microscope one by one to determine their individual sexes. We then had set up a vial with 5 wild type males and one female, checking the vial periodically for any change. Our next step was to make up a vial of mutants. Once both vial were set up, all we had to do is wait for an appearance of eggs or larvae. By the completion of week 2, we started to see ...
