Drosophila melanogaster: Sex Linked Inheritance Pattern of White Eye Color
Drosophila (fruit flies) has a four-stage life cycle. A Drosophila is only an egg for about 36 hours before it becomes a larva. During this time, it will crawl around and feed on the media for about five days until it crawls out to a dry place where it can pupate. As the Drosophila pupates, it is going though a metamorphosis, the eye color begins to show and the pupa case darkens. After hatching, the new adult Drosophila is unable to fly for about two hours. If a female, she will be able to reproduce in 12 hours after hatching and has 50 to 100 eggs only 24 hours after reproducing. The full life span of a Drosophila tends to be about 13 days. Because of their quick reproductive cycle and inexpensiveness, they are ideal laboratory specimens for genetic testing. Thomas Hunt Morgan used Drosophila in genetic experiments to support the evidence of the chromosome theory of heredity. Morgan knew that in Drosophila, females have two X chromosomes and males have only one X chromosome. Morgan proposed that the gene for the eye color variant (white) is located on the X chromosome and that there is no equivalent gene on the Y chromosome. The condition of X-linked genes in the males is said to be hemizygous since there is no corresponding allele on the Y chromosome. Using Morgan's example I have tested experimentally four hypotheses that explain the passage of the white-eyed gene. The possibilities are autosomal dominant, autosomal recessive, X-linked dominant, and X-linked recessive.
I was provided virgin red-eyed females from my instructor. The Drosophila virgins were taken out of a red-eyed dominant group at the 8-hour of their adult life. This is because there is a span of 10 hours were the female is able to fly and its sexual maturity. I started with a group of flies that consisted of virgin red-eyed females and
...