...paragraph has been adopted from http://www.observerbd.com/2015/01/04/64586.php Some Interesting Facts about Fruit Files It is lunch time. You have been looking for eating a nice ripe mango ever since morning. Just when you reach for the delicious piece of fruit on your counter, you see something that makes you annoyed: a swarm of fruit flies! Fruit flies are tiny insects that are always attracted to ripe or rotting fruits and vegetables. The flies do not only eat the fruit, they also lay their eggs there. A single fruit fly can lay more than 480 eggs on the surface of a piece of fruit. The fruit flies that hatch from these eggs are full adults within eight days itself, and they can then lay their own eggs. And it can be seen that, what might start out as a small fruit fly issue can become very large issue within no time....
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...Linkage Mapping in Drosophila Introduction Common fruit flies, D. melanogaster, have been found as one of the most useful tools in genetic research. The reason behind that it is a popular experimental organism is due to the high likely hood of producing mutant, visible individuals. Geneticist, Thomas Morgan Hunt, was the first to discover the Drosophila as a model organism to study genetic hereditary. His research showed that the species could randomly obtain genetic mutations that could be visible in the parental generation. Since fruit flies have a diploid chromosome number of 8 (haploid 4), chromosomal types are easily identified. Various genetic crosses are able to determine that the x-linked gene is found on chromosome 1, while the autosomal genes are located on the 2-4 chromosomes. Mapping of unknown mutations by reciprocal crosses can identify if the alleles are x-linked or autosomal and if these alleles are dominant or recessive. Once the type of allele is determined, other genetic crosses can determine the location of the chromosome that the mutagen is one. For the x-linked mutations, a three factor test cross can induce map order and distance. The physical distance separating two genes on the chromosome (map distance) is directly related the frequency of recombination between markers during meiosis. The greater the map distance of the genes, the greater the probability that there is crossing over when the chromosomes segregate in meiosis. ...
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...objective of the fruit fly lab was to comprehend the study of heredity, and how traits are passed on by generations. As the traits are passed on from the parents, there is a dominant/recessive gene for each, although only the dominant trait will appear. By observing three generations of fruit flies helped in understanding how the process of meiosis is implemented. The classes studied heredity with the generations of flies in the test tubes. The flies were red or brown eyed, or red and white eyed. Scientist use fruit flies in genetic studies since the undeniable similarities in genes to humans.Fruit flies have been used for so long by scientists, because the genes that cause disease in fruit flies cause disease in...
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...The mechanism that triggers food foraging of wide variety of animal species has been studied for a long period of time. The significance of studying genetics and behaviour of flies or other organisms is that it would be used to understand other complex animals such as humans. “almost 75% of genes responsible for human diseases are observed to have homologs in Drosophila fly” (Pandey, U. B., & Nichols, C. D. ,2011). Moreover, one of the most available and favourable animal model used to study is the fruit Drosophila melanogaster. “Drosophila has been a key experimental subject in genetics since the early 1900s. It was initially chosen to study by T.H. Morgan because it can be raised easily in laboratory, and the life cycle and mating can be arranged inexpensively.” (Scott F., Mike H., & Joan S, 2014). Furthermore, “Drosophila has ~ 68...
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...There are many hypotheses and theories that revolve around the theory of evolution itself. Due to technological advances, testing these hypotheses and theories is now possible. Evolution can be accelerated and observed in controlled environments that can be manipulated to see how specimen populations can adapt. Mutations that have been selected for, can even be pinpointed and observed to see how the adaptations were brought about. Since many generations are needed for mutations and adaptions to occur, bacteria and other microorganisms are preferred. However, fruit flies are also used for testing. The E. coli bacterium was used to start a “long-term evolution experiment” by evolutionary biologist, Richard Lenski. The experiment started in 1988...
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...Fruit flys are used as an experimental model because they produce a large amount of offspring in a short amount amount of time(2 weeks). Having a large sample size makes your results more accurate and reliable. I wish to study the black body and wild type traits of the body color characteristic. The phenotype of the black body fly would be having a black body color. The phenotype of a wild type fly would be having a orange body color. During this lab, my goal is to discover which of the two traits is dominant to the other. My hypothesis is as follows: If the wild type trait is dominant, then a cross between a wild type phenotype parent and a black type phenotype parent will result in an F1 distribution of either 100 percent wild type phenotype...
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...the phenotype when present in the homozygous state. Heterozygous means having two different alleles of a gene. A carrier is an individual that has one copy of a recessive allele that causes genetic disease in individuals that are homozygous for this allele. We are going to do an experiment similar to what Gregor Mendel did with pea plants where we observe 3 generations and record the ratios of the phenotypes. The P generations were selected at the company that bred the flies for us (Carolina Biological). The P generation is purebred for their particular phenotype (Homozygous). The day that they were placed in the vials is marked on the vials, as well as the phenotypes of the p generation. After 2 weeks of breeding and laying eggs, the P generation was removed and the vials were shipped. The flies that you are working with today are the F1 generation. Then we selected 5 male and females flies and placed them in a vial with culture medium. After about 10 days we will remove the F1 flies and count the F2 flies. From that data we will determine if the trait of Eye Color is sex linked or autosomal. If a trait is sex-linked, then it is concerning characteristics that are determined by genes carried on the sex chromosomes (on the X chromosome in particular). If a trait is autosomal then it originated off any non sex-chromosome. The...
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...What caused 1.44 billon dollars in crop losses, infects a wide variety of plants and feeds on citrus fruits? That insect is called the Mexican Fruit Fly (Anastrepha ludens). The Mexican fruit fly was first described in 1863 Central Mexico. In the 1900’s during the winter migrate the Mexican fruit fly were discovered infesting along the California-Mexico border which started the introduction of the Mexican fruit fly in the United States. The Mexican fruit fly gets introduced to other areas through the movement of infested fruits. The Mexican fruit fly has not been spotted in the US for many years because of many management tactics used by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to control the threat of an invasion. The USDA has...
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...Tephritidae, a large dipteran family of insects, consisting of 4000 species under 500 genera and is found in almost every zoogeographic i.e. temperate, tropical and subtropical regions etc. of the globe, inhabiting a wide variety of habitats, (Drew, 1992; Grimaldi and Engel, 2005; Vayssieres et al., 2006; De Meyer et al., 2008). These are commonly known as fruit flies. These flies are thought a very devastating group of insect pests causing huge economic losses in agriculture, especially in a variety of fruits vegetables and flowers (Diamantidis et al., 2008). A large number of pest fruit flies are polyphagous in food habit and mostly of them are commercially significant, as vegetables and fruits are much susceptible to fruit fly damage (Aluja & Mangan, 2008). The cross border nature and the demolishing impacts that fruit flies strikes to the horticultural industry globally, have settled them on top of the...
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...We are so aware of humans involved in drug abuse. But ever thought about an animal getting involved in it? It's said, Animals that drugs are hilarious. Some of them do for beneficiary effects while some do just because of their habits. We can't blame them for getting indulged into narcotics abuse. While the only thing we can do , to not let them give us ideas or promote drug abuse in our lifestyle. Here's a list of some 5 druggies that their habits may literally kill you. 1. Fruit Flies A study on alcohol being coducted showed the results that Fruit Flies process alcohol much similar to that of humans. Male fruit flies are highly attracted to alcohol when they are facing a heartbreak, just like humans do when frustrated. 2.Elephant Can you imagine how it is like to see a giant animal getting drunk all over?...
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...Scientific experiments are used to gather new information and knowledge, and the results gained from the experiments are used as tools to study other information about the subject. With this experiment, having Drosophila melanogaster as the subject, the goal is to determine, understand and confirm expected genetic principles of this species such as dominance/recessiveness, autosome/sex linkage, linkage/independent assortment, and genetic map distance if sex linkage does exist. Drosophila melanogaster (D. melanogaster), commonly known as fruit flies, is an excellent organism for genetics studies. Fruit fly is hardy, has a small number of chromosomes (2n=8), completes its life cycle in about 12 days at room temperature, and produces large numbers...
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...Figure 1: Agarose Gel Electrophoresis depicting the PCR product and genomic DNA of fruit flies This agarose gel image was used to visualized the DNA sequence that was isolated from the fruit flies. Agarose Gel Electrophoresis results from Section 3 Bench 5. EGFR was used as the primer RTK gene for this set and sequence. This is the PCR product. Lane 1, ladder; Lane 2, Genomic DNA and it contains the long streak of DNA; Lane 3, Uncut Plasmid; Lane 4, Linear Plasmid that was digested by EcoRI at 3kb; Lane 5, PCR 1; Lane 6, PCR 2 and these lanes (4-6) 9 show how the specific inserts were applied during PCR; Lane 7, Combined PCR that was purified during miniprep; Our target insert was shown in these lanes at 1 kb too. Lane 8, Ladder. This figure shows...
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...Introduction: The experiments of Beadle and Tatum proposed a hypothesis that stated that certain gene traits are related to particular enzymes that are missing. Investigation #19 allowed students to investigate and identify the chemical differences within species of fruit flies, in order, to understand the actions of their genes. The following materials were used to visually see the chemical differences in Drosophila melanogaster mutants: the eyes from the flies, paper chromatography, a good solvent for the paper chromatography to interact with and a UV light source. The seven species of flies used include: wild type, white, cinnabar, brown, cinnabar brown double mutant, sepia and white apricot. The phenotypes of these species varied from a red pigment, brown pigment and a white pigment. When a red pigment and brown pigment are crossed, the resulting color is brick red....
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...Wild Fruit Flies Bred With Scarlet Fruit Flies Introduction: Drosophila melanogaster is the scientific name for fruit flies. The flies are widely used today for genetics, physiology, and life history evolution. Since it is easy to care for, has 4 pairs of chromosomes, breeds quickly, and lays many eggs, the fruity fly is used for numerous studies. In this lab, fruit flies are to be examined to study heredity. With each new generation, probability, protein synthesis, and the principles of DNA, are all able to be seen within this experiment. For this lab, wild fruit flies will be bred with scarlet fruit flies. The trait to be examined in this lab is the eye color. Wild fruit fly's’ eye color (red) is a dominant trait. The scarlet fruit flies have scarlet eyes, and it is a recessive trait. Fruit flies are very small, but their eyes are complex. They have compound eyes. One eye contains hundreds of light-sensing units called ommatidia. Each ommatidia has a lens and a set of light-receptor...
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...Then, in 1947, the first animals were launched into space. Fruit flies were used to study the effects of space travel on animals, and were chosen because they are similar to humans. Albert II, a monkey from Asia, was the first monkey in space. Albert went into space on June 14, 1949 in an American V2 rocket that flew to a height of 83 miles from Earth (History of Space Exploration). On October 4, 1957, Russia launched the first satellite into space, Sputnik 1, officially beginning the point of the space age. Sputnik was the first satellite in orbit around Earth, and today there are over five hundred working satellites in space. In November 1957, a Russian dog named Laika became the first animal to orbit Earth. Laika travelled in a spacecraft known as Sputnik, and her mission helped scientists understand...
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