vestigial expressivity essential for wing and haltere development
Introduction
Drosophila melanogaster is an important model organism that has provided a gateway to new scientific disciplines. In 1910, Thomas Morgan undoubtedly changed the science world by establishing the rules of genetic transmission. The fact that D. melanogaster has many homologs to humans make it an ideal model for drug screenings. About 75% of human disease causing genes are believed to have fly homologs. It posseses a small genome about 5% of that of a human, this also facilitates genetic studies. The study of development biology was hugely aided by imaginal discs that provided a great developmental model (Ricardo M 2009). The fruit fly is easily cultured and its small life cycle made it a perfect model to …show more content…
vg (2-67) mutants exhibit a high volume of cell death around the larval disc region, thus a male adult will be observed with no wings. Some have no wings, reduced wings and without a functioning vg there is no enhancement of cell division or survival. The lack if enhancement decreases or prevents cell proliferation, therefore, making adults with highly reduced wings. The variation in phenotypes comes from different alleles. Most vg alleles are recessive with the exception of a few that act as weak dominants that are beyond the scope of this paper (Williams, Bell 1998). The vg83B27 allele shows a lot of wing a haltere reduction, this is for flies that are homozygous for this recessive allele. They also exhibit wild type phenotypes for all the other characteristics. This is a result of a deletion in a regulatory element that is employed for gene expression (William, Bell 1998). The vgnp allele shows slight nicking in the wing regions. Most of these vg alleles may also show a wide range of other phenotypes including sterility, viability problems, and developmental
Introduction
Drosophila melanogaster is an important model organism that has provided a gateway to new scientific disciplines. In 1910, Thomas Morgan undoubtedly changed the science world by establishing the rules of genetic transmission. The fact that D. melanogaster has many homologs to humans make it an ideal model for drug screenings. About 75% of human disease causing genes are believed to have fly homologs. It posseses a small genome about 5% of that of a human, this also facilitates genetic studies. The study of development biology was hugely aided by imaginal discs that provided a great developmental model (Ricardo M 2009). The fruit fly is easily cultured and its small life cycle made it a perfect model to …show more content…
vg (2-67) mutants exhibit a high volume of cell death around the larval disc region, thus a male adult will be observed with no wings. Some have no wings, reduced wings and without a functioning vg there is no enhancement of cell division or survival. The lack if enhancement decreases or prevents cell proliferation, therefore, making adults with highly reduced wings. The variation in phenotypes comes from different alleles. Most vg alleles are recessive with the exception of a few that act as weak dominants that are beyond the scope of this paper (Williams, Bell 1998). The vg83B27 allele shows a lot of wing a haltere reduction, this is for flies that are homozygous for this recessive allele. They also exhibit wild type phenotypes for all the other characteristics. This is a result of a deletion in a regulatory element that is employed for gene expression (William, Bell 1998). The vgnp allele shows slight nicking in the wing regions. Most of these vg alleles may also show a wide range of other phenotypes including sterility, viability problems, and developmental