Question

The gene for body color and wing shape reside on the same chromosome in fruit flies. After crossing female flies having gray bodies and normal wings with male flies having black bodies and vestigial wings, Morgan observed that some of the F1 flies had nonparental phenotypes (gray bodies with vestigial wings, or black bodies with normal wings). What accounts for this?

A. The alleles for wing shape and body color recombined by crossing over.B. Some flies with those phenotypes accidentally contaminated the cross.C. The alleles underwent independent assortment during meiosis.D. A certain percentage of the F1 generation was affected by genetic mutations.

Answer 1

The best answer to the question: What account for this? Would be, A: The alleles for wing shape and body color recombined by crossing over.

Step-by-step explanation:

When talking about genetic inheritance of certain traits from parents, we always have to remember that not everything is as clear-cut as sometimes research intends to show. Usually, we would make a crossing of the alleles from the parents, both dominant and recessive, and thus establish what alleles would express which phenotype dominantly or recessively. But in genetics, during pairings, chromosomes may combine in such a way, and recombine in such a way that traits that would not be expected to appear, actually do. In this case, that is what happened; during combination of alleles, a process of recombination took place and the phenotypical expression of that recombination showed offspring, especially of the F1, that had nonparental phenotypes.