Wild - type
"Normal, nonmutant form of an organism; the form found in nature (i.e. in the wild)" [1].
A wild-type is an organism with the most common genotype or phenotype within a natural population. The wild-type allele is the normal, natural isolate of a gene.
However the wild-type can also be arbitually designated to a certain genotype or phenotype, as a standard of comparison, for example to a mutant organism [2].
When writing out Punnett squares the symbol used to signify the wild type is a +.
The Drosophila fruit fly was one of the first organisms to be researched for the wild type theory. This was done by a scientist called Thomas Hunt Morgan who discovered in an isolated population the majority of fly’s had red eyes but only a small few had white eyes therefore these were termed the mutant and the red eye fly’s being the most common phenotype in the population were termed the wild type. [3]
References
- ↑ Bruce Alberts, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, Peter Walter (2008) Molecular Biology of THE CELL. 5th ed. United States of America, Garland Science.
- ↑ Daniel L. Hartl, Maryellen Ruvolo (2012) Genetics, Analysis of Genes and Genomes. 8th ed. USA. Higher Education
- ↑ Wild Type - Gene, Phenotype, Mutation, and Genetic - JRank Articles . 2014. Wild Type - Gene, Phenotype, Mutation, and Genetic - JRank Articles . [ONLINE] Available at: http://science.jrank.org/pages/7387/Wild-Type.html. [Accessed 28 November 2014].
