Drosophila

Drosophila melanogaster (more commonly known as a fruit fly) is a very useful model organism and has been used for over 80 years in the study of inheritance with their Genome first sequenced in 2001. They only have four chromosomes with a total genome size of 165Mbp, which encodes for 14000 genes. Drosophila have giant, polytene, chromosomes which make chromosomal processes easier to study under the microscope. Specific changes in the organisms hereditary information were found to exactly correlate to the alteration or loss of specific giant chromosome bands. This provided proof that units of hereditary information are carried on chromosomes. The Drosphila has also been used to gain further understanding of embryonic development.

Developent of Drosophila

During the development of Drosophila larvae, the four of the Drosophila have a dinstinctive banding pattern that makes it possible to observe large-scale chromosomal alterations. The development of Drosophila produces body segments in an anterior-posterior order that is similar to the basic body plan that is common to invertabrates and vertabrates. As a result of this, a lot of the knowledge around body development has been learnt from the fruit fly.