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Bearded Fruit Fly Lab Report

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Name: Paul Meyer PS ID #: 1305816 BIOL 3311 Fall 2014
Lab Section: 16254 Date: 10/10/14 TA Instructor Name: Tess Doumas

Writing Assignment 3: “Bearded (Brd) gene encodes for multiplication and thickening of chaetae and sensilla by interfering with neurogenic pathway”
Introduction
An important aspect of research is finding an appropriate model to use for performing one’s experiment(s). For biology and genetics, Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, has proven to be a suitable subject for over the last 100 years. In 1910, a small research group led by principal investigator Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia University first utilized Drosophila as a model organism to discover two fundamental concepts of genetics – chromosomal means …show more content…

Drosophila has a short generation time (approximately 10 days from egg to adult at room temperature), which allows for quicker experiments and faster data collection. Drosophila has a relatively high fertility (impregnated females can lay up to 100 eggs per day and up to 2000 eggs in their lifetime), which means more data to analyzed. Because of fruit flies’ simple diet and size, Drosophila proves to be an easy and cost-effective organism to take care of in the laboratory. With the Drosophila genome sequenced in 2000 and the creation of Flybase.org, knowledge of Drosophila is now widely accessible and information is exponentially increasing (Giot et. al. 2003). Given there has already been a vast amount of research conducted on fruit flies, Drosophila proves to be a prime model organism since preliminary information is readily available to construct new …show more content…

Although it only takes a single mutant allele to express the mutant phenotype, mutant homozygotes (if they survive into adulthood) tend to have a more severe or even unique phenotype compared to heterozygotes for the same mutant allele. For example, homozygotes for Brd1 mutation display duplication and thickening of humeral, notopleural, and scutellar bristles compared to both wild-type and heterozygous mutant phenotypes; however, Brd1 homozygotes also experience a loss of anterior orbital and ocellar bristles, which is not seen in both wild-type and heterozygous mutant phenotypes (Leviten and Posakony

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