Question 3c Suppose you discovered a female Drosophila melanogaster fly that was

Question

Question 3c

Suppose you discovered a female Drosophila melanogaster fly that was clearly smaller than
usual and had already been fertilized by at least one of the wild type males in the bottle. Youisolate the female and allow her to lay eggs. All of her first generation offspring are small like themother. Using this offspring as a starting point, design a set of experiments to help determinethe type of inheritance for the trait. Indicate what results would be expected in each generationfor each of the following types of inheritance:

(c) mitochondrial inheritance of the small body phenotype.

Explanation / Answer

The female Drosophila melanogaster discovered was unusually small in size. The offspring obtained after its fertilzation with wild type male fly are also small like their mother fly. In our experiment, these offsprings are further crossed with wild type male flies to observe the size of offsprings going to be obtained. If the new offsprings are also small in size similar to their mother, then it would be determined that the type of inheritance is mitochondrial inheritance.

Mitochondria are scattered throughout the cytoplasm in both animal and plant cells. Their DNA will be replicated during the process of mitochondrial division. All newly formed embryos receive all their mitochondria from the mother through egg cell. Thus, mitochondrial inheritance is through the maternal line. If the mother is affected in mitochondrial genome, then all its offspring will have affected mitochondrial genome. Since mitochondrial genome does not involve in recombination process, there is no chance for the reduction of this affect in offspring.

Hence, the type of inheritance expected in this case is mitochondrial inheritance.

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