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What Did Thomas Hunt Morgan Discover

Thomas Hunt Morgan used fruit flies in his pioneering genetics studies because of their short life cycle of 30 days, allowing many generations to be studied quickly. Fruit flies also produce huge numbers of offspring, up to 2,000 per female, and are inexpensive to maintain on food and at controlled temperatures. Additional advantages included fruit flies having giant polytene chromosomes visible under light microscopes, providing evidence that genes are located on chromosomes. Morgan discovered genes are inherited together in linkage groups on chromosomes, but occasionally recombine during meiosis, an important source of genetic variation.

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76 views1 page

What Did Thomas Hunt Morgan Discover

Thomas Hunt Morgan used fruit flies in his pioneering genetics studies because of their short life cycle of 30 days, allowing many generations to be studied quickly. Fruit flies also produce huge numbers of offspring, up to 2,000 per female, and are inexpensive to maintain on food and at controlled temperatures. Additional advantages included fruit flies having giant polytene chromosomes visible under light microscopes, providing evidence that genes are located on chromosomes. Morgan discovered genes are inherited together in linkage groups on chromosomes, but occasionally recombine during meiosis, an important source of genetic variation.

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What did Thomas Hunt Morgan discover?

Thomas Hunt Morgan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933.
The work for which the prize was awarded was completed over a 17-year period at
Columbia University, commencing in 1910 with his discovery of the white-eyed mutation
in the fruit fly, Drosophila.

Why did Thomas Hunt Morgan use fruit flies in his studies?

Thomas Hunt Morgan used fruit flies to study genetics for several reasons. First, fruit flies have
a short life cycle that lasts an average of just 30 days. This means genetic traits can be studied
over dozens of generations in the course of a year. This rapid reproductive cycle is impossible
to match in any mammalian model, even mice or rats. Second, fruit flies produce huge numbers
of offspring.

A female fruit fly can lay up to 500 eggs in a single batch. Since fruit flies can lay several
batches of eggs in a lifetime, this amounts to 2,000 or more offspring, far more than
any female mammal could produce. A third consideration is cost. Fruit fly colonies are
extremely inexpensive to maintain. At minimum, they require a food source, such as
overripe fruit, and an adjustable thermostat. Interestingly, fruit flies live longer at cold
temperatures, but breed more often at temperatures above 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

Additional advantages of using fruit flies became evident as time passed. Fruit flies
contain four pairs of giant chromosomes, known as polytene chromosomes, in their
salivary glands. These chromosomes are large enough to be seen under a light
microscope, the type commonly used at the time. This observation provided solid
evidence that genes, the physical units of heredity, are located on chromosomes.

Morgan and his students also discovered that many genes coding for traits such as eye
color, wing shape, and bristle length, were inherited together in most fruit fly offspring.
Occasionally, these linkage groups, as Morgan called them, were disrupted as fly
chromosomes mixed and matched parts during meiosis. Scientists refer to these
chromosomal crossover events as recombination. This process is a major source of
genetic variation in all species that reproduce sexually

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