Digitized Honors Theses (2002-2017)

Shruti Puri

Date of Award

5-2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

BS

Department

Biomedical Sciences

Faculty Mentor

Robin Mockett

Abstract

Life extension is an important measure of treatments that affect the aging process. Single-gene mutations have been discovered which increase the longevity of D. melanogaster. However, these mutations might also cause a decrease in the fertility of the organism. It is necessary to discover mutations which increase the life span of organisms without decreasing the fertility. For this experiment, six artificially selected, long- and short-lived lines of Drosophila melanogaster were used as a model system. These studies addressed the effect of the white eye mutation and isogeny on the fertility of D. melanogaster in eleven derivative lines. If the white eye mutation did not affect fertility, then it could be used in later experiments to insert single-gene mutations containing a functional white marker gene. Isogeny was used to make the differences between lines more distinct and the flies within each line more similar. The hypothesis of the experiment was that the white eye mutation and isogeny would not have an effect on the fertility of Drosophila melanogaster. To perform the experiment, three virgin females and males were put in to each of four replicate vials for each line. The parent flies were transferred into a new vial every day and after a few weeks, they were transferred every two-three days. The progeny were counted fourteen days after the parent flies had been in the vial. The results of the experiment showed that the white eye mutation did not have an effect on fertility. However, isogeny caused a decrease in the fertility. The results of the experiment suggest that the original groups of isogenic flies had accumulated a lot of harmful mutations. When the groups were made isogenic, these mutations had become fixed in almost all groups. The conclusion of the study was that due to the presence of these harmful mutations, the original long- and short-lived lines are no longer a good model for future studies of longevity and fertility. In order to further perform experiments on the effects of single-gene mutations, the y w external control would be an ideal line to use. This line showed consistently high fertility in both replicate experiments, and it has been used in previous studies.

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