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| Drosophila melanogaster | ||||||||||||||
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| Male Drosophila melanogaster | ||||||||||||||
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| Drosophila melanogaster |
Drosophila melanogaster (black-bellied dew-lover) a dipteran (two-winged) insect, is the species of fruit fly that is commonly used in genetic experiments.
The life cycle of Drosophila melanogaster at 25 °C takes only 2 weeks. Females lay eggs (embryos) that eclose after 24 h. The resulting larvae grow for 5 d while molting twice, at about 24 and 48 h after eclosion, before encapsulating in the puparium and undergoing a five-day-long metamorphosis.
Females first mate about 8 hours after emergence. The females store sperm from previous males they mated with for later use. For this reason geneticists must collect the female fly before her first mating, that is, a virgin female, and ensure that she mates only with the particular male needed for the experiment.
Drosophila melanogaster was chosen as a genetic animal model at the beginning of the twentieth century by Nobel Prize winner Thomas Hunt Morgan. Since then it has been a very successful animal model for biological research, for several reasons: