Who first discovered white eye mutant in Drosophila?

Thomas Hunt Morgan
white, abbreviated w, was the first sex-linked mutation discovered, found in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In 1910 Thomas Hunt Morgan and Lilian Vaughan Morgan collected a single male white-eyed mutant from a population of Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies, which usually have dark brick red compound eyes.

What is the purpose of the fruit fly lab?

NASA’s Fruit Fly Lab provides a research platform aboard the International Space Station for long-duration fruit fly–Drosophila melanogaster–studies in space. The system has three major components. The first is the Fly Cassette that will house and safely transport fruit flies to the space station.

What is the mode of inheritance for eye color in Drosophila?

This is a clear demonstration of sex-linked inheritance. The eye color gene is located on the X chromosome (one of the sex determining chromosomes of Drosophila). White eye color is recessive. When a red eyed male mates with white eyed females, their daughters will have red eyes, but their sons will have white eyes.

How is Drosophila used in research?

The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is used as a model organism to study disciplines ranging from fundamental genetics to the development of tissues and organs.

Why do we use Drosophila to study genetics?

And then on a practical level, Drosophila has a short life cycle of about two weeks, and females have a lot of offspring—they can lay hundreds of eggs in a few days. Both these features make them a great system for genetic experiments.

What can chromatography tell us about Drosophila eye color?

CHROMATOGRAPHY OF DROSOPHILA EYE PIGMENTS This early genetic work demonstrated that a change in a gene (mutation) may affect the structure, function, or regulation of a protein, in this case, an enzyme. Eye color mutants have a defect in one or more enzymes required for the biochemical pathways of pigment synthesis.

Why are Drosophila used in genetic experiments?

There are many technical advantages of using Drosophila over vertebrate models; they are easy and inexpensive to culture in laboratory conditions, have a much shorter life cycle, they produce large numbers of externally laid embryos and they can be genetically modified in numerous ways.

What is the Morgan theory?

By painstakingly examining thousands upon thousands of flies with a microscope and a magnifying glass, Morgan and his colleagues confirmed the chromosomal theory of inheritance: that genes are located on chromosomes like beads on a string, and that some genes are linked (meaning they are on the same chromosome and …

What is Morgan’s experiment?

Morgan hypothesized that, in his breeding experiment, the first generation of flies contained males only with white eyes because the gene controlling eye color was on the X chromosome. Males displayed the white eye trait because the trait was present on their only X chromosome.

Why is Drosophila used in genetic experiments?

Why Drosophila is most suitable organism for genetics experiments?

Drosophila has high rate of reproduction and hence newer organisms can be obtained rapidly.

Why is it that Drosophila is a good laboratory specimen on chromosomal studies?

D. melanogaster only has four pairs of chromosomes compared to 23 pairs in humans. This simplicity was one of the reasons why they were first used in genetic studies; Drosophila genes could be mapped easily to investigate genetic transmission.

How did we observe the spots on the chromatogram?

The silica gel on the TLC plate is impregnated with a fluorescent material that glows under ultraviolet (UV) light. A spot will interfere with the fluorescence and appear as a dark spot on a glowing background. While under the UV light, the spots can be outlined with a pencil to mark their locations.

What are the two pigment pathways in Drosophila?

In the eyes of Drosophila, the pigments responsible for eye color are produced by two biochemical pathways: the onmochrome pathway producing a brown pigment, and the pteridine pathway first passing through a pale blue then yellow pigment stages producing a bright red (scarlet) pigment called drosopterin.