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As we would predict, the ones that develop faster will get out of that environment a lot faster. “I’m putting our two fruit fly lines, the very fast and the slower developers, under extreme environments. Then we can ask, ‘How repeatable is the evolutionary process?’ Because we can independently employ the same conditions in different lines and ask, ‘Do they change in a parallel fashion? Do they converge together in the same kind of organism in the end?’”Īnastasia Shavrova, MSc student. We can take five or six of each type, and so we can have different origins from different populations in nature. in the lab,we can take one population and make it evolve to be reproductive at late ages, take another and make it competent to reproduce at early ages. “Nature rarely offers us the opportunity of statistical replication. if the process is repeatable, it can potentially be predictable.”Īdam Chippindale, Professor of Evolutionary Genetics. if they have evolved in the same way, then the process is repeatable.

I’m looking for patterns, using the system that we have, to see if they have evolved the same way. “I’m interested in evolution as a repeatable process. Alpern is looking at fine-scale aspects of gene expression through growth, i.e., what genes are being turned on at which stages during larval growth. “I’m working on a new method of sperm count of the fast and slow-developing fruit flies, studying flies that have GFP in their semen.” Rana is working in the lab this summer through the Queen’s Summer Work Experience Program. We’re studying it through reproduction and selection.” We’re hoping through our experiment that we’ll get a better understanding of when exactly it occurs. “We know that speciation is a widely occurring phenomenon. Hickox is working in the Chippindale lab this summer through the NSERC undergraduate student research award program. Chippindale’s strain of fast developers has now gone through more than 1150 generations of evolution. Chippindale developed his line of early-developing fruit flies as a grad student at UC Irvine, studying with Michael Rose (Artsci’75, MSc’76, PhD, Sussex), a noted evolutionary biologist. We have pushed them right to the speed limit of development.” Dr. “We have an artificial phylogeny – a tree of life – that we’ve created from common ancestry, with some that have been selected to reproduce at late ages, some at young ages, and some at extremely early ages. Photo: Bernard ClarkĪdam Chippindale and his students study evolution in real time.

Hickox, Mansuba Rana, Josh Alpern, Adam Chippindale, Anastasia Shavrova. If you say, ‘I’d like to do such-and-such elaborate experiment,’ probably you can do it on a fly.”įrom left to right: M.K. The genetic techniques for targeting specific tissues, and even specific neurons in the brain, and manipulating them, it’s amazing. With the fly, because of its very fast reproduction and accessible genome, it is easier to do genetic manipulations. You can do things with flies that you can’t do with a more complex nervous system. “The fruit fly nervous system is very sophisticated,” says neurobiologist Mel Robertson, “and its brain is accessible to study by some very detailed techniques. By 2000, the Drosophila genome had been fully sequenced. In the early 1900s, Thomas Hunt Morgan, a biologist and geneticist, demonstrated, through his work with fruit flies, that genes are carried on chromosomes and are the mechanical basis of heredity. Drosophila was first studied for genetic purposes in the 1880s by entomologist Charles W. With its large chromosomes, rapid life cycle, and ready supply, Drosophila melanogaster has made a perfect model organism for study by scientists. But for more than a century, the fruit fly has been a central player in the study of genetics. For many, it is seen as a harmless annoyance. The fruit fly, or Drosophila (“Dew-lover” in Greek), is attracted to the yeasts in rotting fruit and in wine. Of what possible use is a fruit fly? Besides, of course, letting you know that those bananas in your kitchen have gone off.