Will the Autosomal Recessive Mutation of Vestigial Wings Appear in the F1 Generation of Drosophila melanogaster?

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of my project was to show if an autosomal recessive mutation will appear in the first generation. This project also was designed to differentiate the difference between a dominant trait and a recessive trait. Another purpose was to see how a semi-lethal mutation(vestigial wings) effects a population. Methods/Materials To perform this experiment, I had to do a number of things to insure viable data. I had to first make enough media to fill all the vials, so the flies all had equal living conditions. Then, I had to separate the pupae by wing type and gender to insure virgin flies. Next, I had to wait for the pupae to develop. After that, I crossed the vestigial females with the wild males and the vestigial males with the wild females. After they reproduced, I removed the P1 generation and allowed the F1 generation to develop. When most of the flies hatched, I recorded my data. Results My data was unexpected. In the final vials, 11.8% of the flies carried the vestigial wing mutation while 88.2% of the flies had wild type wings. I had thought that there would be no flies that carried the vestigial wing mutation, but 2 out of 17 showed the phenotype of vestigial wings. In the first vial, 85.7% of the flies had wild type wings, while 14.2% showed the phenotype of vestigial wings. In vial two, 88.9% of the flies had wild type wings, while 11.1% showed the vestigial wing mutation. In the third vial, 100% of the flies had wild type wings, and 05 had the vestigial wing mutation. The last, fourth, vial had no hatching flies; therefore no flies carried the vestigial wing mutation or wild type wings. Conclusions/Discussion In conclusion, my hypothesis was not supported. I thought that no flies would show the phenotype of vestigial wings, but some did. I believe the reason for this is that I accidentally placed a vestigial male with a vestigial female during the sexing process. This would provide for both parents carrying the recessive trait, so the offspring would show this vestigial phenotype. Another explanation is that a heterozygous wild fly carried the mutation on one chromosome, but didn't show the mutation. A heterozygous fly crossed with a double recessive fly produces, 50% of the time, a recessive offspring. All in all, this project demonstrated the difference of dominant versus recessive traits.

Competition history

• CSEF 2007 Zoology · Entry J1903

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Animal Sciences projects
• CSEF Animal Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2007 project