Drosophila simulans
| Drosophila simulans | ||||||||||||
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Drosophila simulans |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Drosophila simulans | ||||||||||||
| Sturtevant , 1919 |
Drosophila simulans is a Drosophila - kind from the family of fruit flies . It is closely related to Drosophila melanogaster , the fruit fly, which is used as a model organism in genetics, developmental and cell biology . The species wasfirst describedby Alfred Sturtevant in 1919 and used for comparative genetic studies in the early 1920s. Outwardly, Drosophila simulans and D. melanogaster are very similar, the only "noticeable" difference being the male genitals. The two species diverged 2-3 million years ago, until then they had a common ancestor.
Drosophila simulans has various properties that make the species suitable for a genetic comparison with Drosophila melanogaster :
- It has a comparable generation time and can be grown under the same conditions.
- There is only one major chromosomal abnormality in chromosome 3, an inversion.
- The genomes can therefore be easily compared with one another (see alignment )
- In particular, polymorphisms can be identified in this way .
Drosophila simulans is being sequenced by the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University Medical School . The genome is compared with that of Drosophila melanogaster and can provide evidence of evolutionary divergence, which can be used as evidence or counter-evidence for hypotheses of the theory of evolution (such as mutation rates, selection and genetic drift). So far it can already be judged that the two species are sufficiently closely related, but nevertheless significantly different, to be able to be used for this purpose.
literature
- G. Bächli / H. Burla: Insecta Helvetica 7: Diptera - Drosophilidae. Swiss Entomological Society 1985
