Drosophila Melanogaster

Drosophila MelanogasterIn most kitchens the small flies that are found are Drosophila Melanogaster also called fruit fly. They are often brought in by ripened tomatoes, grapes and other perishable items from the garden. Drosophila melanogaster is a little two winged insect about 3mm long two winged insect that belongs to the Diptera, the order of the flies. The drosophila egg is about half a millimeter long. Fertilization takes about one day the embryo to develop and hatch into a worm-like larva. The larva eats and grows continuously, after two days as a third in star larva; it moults one more time to form an immobile pupa. Over the next four days, the body is completely remodeled to give the adult winged form, which then hatches from the pupal case and is fertile within about 12 hours. Fruit fly has four pairs of chromosomes: the X/Y sex chromosomes and the autosomes 2, 3, and 4. the fourth chromosome is very tiny and rarely heard from. The size of the genome is about 165 million bases and containsand estimated 14,000 genes (by comparison, the human genome has 3,400 million bases and may have about 22,500 genes; yeast has about 5800 genes in 13.5 million base bases). The genome has been completely sequenced and analysis of the data is now mostly complete.

Fruit fly is a most commonly used model organism in studies such as genetics, biology, physiology and life history evolution. It is so useful because it is very small and easy to grow in the laboratory. It has a short generation time about two weeks and a high productivity. The mature larvae show giant chromosomes in the salivary glands. Drosophila has been used as a model organism for research for almost a century, and today. Part of the reason people work on it is because it is a small animal, with a short life cycle of just two weeks, and is cheap and easy to keep large numbers. Mutant flies, with defects in any of several thousand genes are available, and the entire genome has recently been sequenced. Fruit flies...