Question

Scientists often use fruit flies as a method to test hypotheses about human genes. Why are fruit flies advantageous in the study of human inheritance?

Answer 1

D. they reproduce quickly and take up little step

Answer 2

Fruit fly or Drosophila melanogaster is one of the most well understood model organism. It is used extensively in scientific research, specially human genetics due to following reasons:

• Drosophila and humans share almost 75% of genes
• Drosophila's reproduction cycle is only of 8-14 days so many generations can be observed in a short amount of time
• They are small and hence do not require a lot of space
• Their maintenance is easy and cheap
• It is a well studied model organism so a lot of information is available about them
• It is easy to mutate Drosophila genes.