1/2/2012 4:07:00 PM In fruit flies, the phenotype for eye color is determined by a certain locus.

E indicates the dominant allele and e indicates the recessive allele. The cross between a male wild type fruit fly and a female white-eyed fruit fly produced the following offspring. Wild-type Wild-type White-eyed White-eyed Brown-eyed male female male female female F1 0 45 55 0 1 The wild-type and white-eyed individuals from the F1 generation were then crossed to produce the following offspring. F2 23 31 22 24 0 (a) Determine the genotypes of the original parents (P generation) and explain your reasoning. You may use Punnett squares to enhance your description, but the results from the Punnett squares must be discussed in your answer. It can be determined that the P generation was made up of wild-type males and white-eyed females. When the males are wild-type and females are white-eyed, the Punnett square will look like this: E e F1: 50% Ee, 50% ee e Ee ee e Ee ee As can be observed, the offspring of wild-type males and white-eyed females will be half wild-type (Ee) and half white-eyed (ee). In addition, it can also be observed from F1 that the wild-types are females while the white-eyed are males. Hence, it can be said that the eye-color gene is sex-linked. In insects, females are XX and males are XO.

This can be reflected by the Punnett square below: XE O F1: 50% XEXe (wild-type females), 50% XeO (white-eyed males) Xe XEXe XeO Xe XEXe XeO (b) Use a Chi-squared test on the F2 generation data to analyze your prediction of the parental genotypes. Show all your work and explain the importance of your final answer. Xe O Predicted proportions: 25% wild-type females, 25% white-eye females, XE XEXe XEO 25% wild-type males, 25% white-eyed males Xe XeXe XeO In this case, the predicted ratio will be 1:1:1:1. In the given scenario of 100 individuals, there should be 25 individuals in each category. Using the chi-square test-statistic (X2 = (O E)2/E ): X2 = (23 25)2/25 + (31 25)2/25 + (22 25)2/25 + (24 25)2/25 X2 = 4/25 + 36/25 + 9/25 + 1/25 X2 = 50/25 = 2 When compared to a chi-square distribution with 3 degrees of freedom (df = n 1), the critical value will be X2 = 7.8 with a significance level of 0.05. Thus, given that X2 is smaller than 7.8, the null hypothesis is supported. (c) The brown-eyed female in the F1 generation resulted from a mutational change. Explain what a mutation is, and discuss two types of mutations that might have produced the brown-eyed female in the F1 generation. Mutation refers to a change in the DNA sequence of a gene. A mutation is observed when new phenotypes arise which is different from the parent generation.

The two types of mutations which might have produced the brown-eyed female in the F1 generation will be a change in number of base pairs and single based alteration. In the cause of a change in number of base pairs also known as frame-shift mutation, a different protein is produced due to the addition or reduction of a base pair for the codons will now be different. As such, this protein may have resulted in a different eye color. On the other hand, a single based alteration occurs when one base is substituted for another. This causes the codon to code for different amino acids and thus results in the change in eye color.