Fruit Fly Lab Report

In lab we were introduce to the Fruit Fly Genetics experiment. We had to observe, and learn the life cycle and the stages of the fruit fly. Throughout the experiment we had to learn the different traits of males to females, white from red eyes and miniature from normal wing size. In this experiment we were paired up in partner's, and each of us had to separate males flies from females. The way that we were able to determine their gender was by knowing that males have black sex combs on their front leg. The tip of the male's abdomen looks as though it had been cut off and appears blunt. Also their posterior end of their abdomen is solid black. As for females they lack sex combs, and their posterior end of their stomach is striped which makes

Reciprocal cross is referred to females possessing the dominant allele that are mated with males possessing the recessive allele and females possessing the recessive allele that are mated with males possessing the dominant allele. We first had to isolate virgin fruit flies from the existing fly populations and then perform a reciprocal cross of the two populations. The reciprocal cross consisted of cross A- male's (+) wild type and females (wmf) mutant type. Cross B consisted of males (wmf) mutant type and females (+) wild-type. The wild-type flies have two dominant traits, red eye color and normal wing length. The Mutant flies have two recessive traits that are white eye color and miniature wings. For this part of the lab we were paired in groups of four, that consisted of the two sets of partners that were established in the first lab of fruit flies. The first thing that we had to do was to isolate the virgin flies from the vials, by preparing two vials for each genetic strain of active flies. My partner and I we were able to anesthetize our two vials of wild- type and mutant flies, same as the partners that were assigned to us as a group. Once we were able to anesthetize the flies, we sort them by sex and placed them into their own assigned vials. The labels vials contained ( + for wild- type or wmf for mutant type), gender, data, and group initials. For this part of the