Sex chromosome evolution tracked in fruit fly
Friday, July 20, 2012 - 05:00
in Biology & Nature
(Phys.org) -- Fruit flies are commonly used in genetics research because their lifespan is short, they are easy to breed in the laboratory, and mutants are widely available. There are about 1,500 known species. Now a new study of one of these species of fruit fly has tracked the evolution of a pair of sex chromosomes that appeared only around a million years ago.