Okay. So now let's talk about the Drosophila p element. So the Drosophila, remember fruit flies, the p element is actually one of the first eukaryotic transposable elements identified. And so the p element is a transposon, meaning that it jumps throughout the genome, and it has the ability in fruit flies to severely disrupt the genome. And so, scientists studying these transposons have actually developed strains of them. So the strains of fly with it are called p strains. So if the fruit fly has p elements, that's called a p strain. And there are different strains of fruit flies, the different flies that have them and different fruit flies that don't. So if people studying this have figured out that if you make a male p strain, so a male fruit fly that has these p elements in them, with a female m strain, and this is a strain that doesn't have it, so a male that has it with a female that doesn't, what you get is the offspring has this phenotype called hybrid dysgenesis. And this hybrid dysgenesis just means it's, sort of, this overarching description of all the offspring. And so, this means that all the offspring are kind of screwed up. There are mutations, some of them are sterile, there's chromosomal breakage, but they have pretty serious defects in every single one of the offspring. Now, if you do the cross or the inverse of that, so if you take a female p strain, so a female with those p elements, and a male m strain, so a male without them, then and you mate them and their offspring, you get normal offspring. And so studying this, scientists were kind of perplexed, and they were, like, why? Like, what has to do with the fact that the p male female has the transposable element that makes them, like, the transposable elements not work. And so the hypothesis and what was found to be true is that the egg, so remember coming from the female p strain, has some kind of elements that can suppress the p element, and it suppresses that jumping and so the jumping doesn't occur and when the jumping doesn't occur, you get normal offspring. So, right, if you mate a p male and a female m, what you get is hybridogenesis where all these offspring, transposons have jumped into all these different genes. They're called chromosomal breakage and mutations of a variety of different things, sterility, and these are very sickly flies. Whereas, if you do the inverse cross, the egg contains, p element suppressors. So those transposons do not jump, so there's no jumping. And when they don't jump, that means that all the genes are normal. So you get normal offspring from this cross. This is a super important, super important way that scientists have studied transposable elements. So with that, let's now turn the page.
Table of contents
- 1. Introduction to Genetics51m
- 2. Mendel's Laws of Inheritance3h 37m
- 3. Extensions to Mendelian Inheritance2h 41m
- 4. Genetic Mapping and Linkage2h 28m
- 5. Genetics of Bacteria and Viruses1h 21m
- 6. Chromosomal Variation1h 48m
- 7. DNA and Chromosome Structure56m
- 8. DNA Replication1h 10m
- 9. Mitosis and Meiosis1h 34m
- 10. Transcription1h 0m
- 11. Translation58m
- 12. Gene Regulation in Prokaryotes1h 19m
- 13. Gene Regulation in Eukaryotes44m
- 14. Genetic Control of Development44m
- 15. Genomes and Genomics1h 50m
- 16. Transposable Elements47m
- 17. Mutation, Repair, and Recombination1h 6m
- 18. Molecular Genetic Tools19m
- 19. Cancer Genetics29m
- 20. Quantitative Genetics1h 26m
- 21. Population Genetics50m
- 22. Evolutionary Genetics29m
16. Transposable Elements
Transposable Elements in Eukaryotes
Video duration:
3mPlay a video:
Related Videos
Related Practice
Transposable Elements in Eukaryotes practice set
![](/channels/images/assetPage/ctaCharacter.png)