Fruit Flies:Drosophila melanogaster

AticaAlishia · Post by **AticaAlishia** » Thu Nov 09, 2006 6:30 pm

I have to baisicly do a sceince fair report, without the science fair on Drosophila melanogaster and i need some help. will someone help me?

tsham12 · Post by **tsham12** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 1:14 am

What are you interested in? Genetics, behavior, enviromental factors etc?

We are working with fruit flies in my biology class and I know they're easy to make go to sleep if you use a special chemical and they mate quickly. So maybe some kind of genetics reports might be easy?

So you don't have to do the science fair, but just write a science fair report like u did the fair?

Thescienceguy · Post by **Thescienceguy** » Fri Nov 10, 2006 1:47 pm

Here are just a few websites to get you started on your research:

http://www.ceolas.org/fly/intro.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster

If you reply back on what aspect of the Fruit Fly that you want to study, then more people will be able to help you on your project. Hope these web sites help.

soundwave990 · Post by **soundwave990** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 10:04 pm

hey there

i have found some info on drosophila melanogaster i find this topic very interesting so check out some of these sites if you havnt yet

http://biology.arizona.edu/sciconn/less ... /intro.htm
http://www.nature.com/genomics/papers/drosophila.html

hhemken · Post by **hhemken** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 1:10 pm

Try googling the following keywords:

drosophila "science fair" kit

You will find supplies that can jump-start your project and give you good ideas for variations.

paulogoeb · Post by **paulogoeb** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 5:45 pm

I have a few suggestions:
I did some research and I believe that the most interesting aspect of this fruit fly is its application to the importance of human health....this was done by Ed Lewis, Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus in 1995 and was awarded the Nobel Prize, so I think you should try to put your own spin on their report...
Some useful sites:
http://www.ceolas.org/fly/intro.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster
http://www.fruitfly.org/ (If you are thinking about doing the genetics of this fruit fly, I would use information from this site as a reference).
Hope that helps...

nicolerumore · Post by **nicolerumore** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:20 pm

So you are doing a report,not an experiment? If so, you should consider writing about the different applications of these type of flies. It seems that they are the subject of many interesting projects.
They are being used in a genome sequencing project: http://www.fruitfly.org/
These are the common fruit fly which are very easily bred and thus make easy test subjects in labs. This should be of interest-
"Drosophila melanogaster is the most studied organism in biological research, particularly in genetics and developmental biology. There are several reasons:
-It is small and easy to grow in the laboratory
-It has a short generation time (about 2 weeks) and high productivity (females can lay 500 eggs in 10 days)
-The mature larvae show giant chromosomes in the salivary glands called polytene chromosomes - "puffs" indicate regions of transcription and hence gene activity.
-It has only 4 pairs of chromosomes: 3 autosomal, and 1 sex.
-Males do not show meiotic recombination, facilitating genetic studies.
-Genetic transformation techniques have been available since 1987.
-Its compact genome was sequenced in 1998.[8] "
-Wikipedia

Hope it helps with your report!