Effects of ort1 mutation and gender on the recovery time of Drosophila melanogaster after being anesthetized by CO2

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of gender and the ort¹ mutation on the recovery time of Drosophila melanogaster after being exposed to CO₂. Previous studies suggested that the mutant D. melanogaster takes longer to recover from CO₂ anesthesia compared to the Oregon-R wild-type strain. Yet, there has been little research done on the effects of gender on the recovery time. To test the recovery time between the two genders and the two strains, we exposed two groups, a wild-type group and a mutant group of D. melanogaster, to CO₂. The D. melanogaster were in vials when they were exposed to CO₂ and after the exposure we monitored each replicate individually in Petri dishes. Recovery time and sex data were collected for each of the replicates. The difference in the recovery time between the wild type and the mutant was not significant and gender had no effect on the recovery time as the p-value was less than 0.5. However, the effects of gender on recovery time in Drosophila melanogaster are not the same for the wild-type and mutant strain.