Genetics of Ascospore Color in Sordaria lab

Introduction: To achieve genetic experiments with haploid organisms, genetic strains of different genotypes must be crossed from one another. Following fertilization and meiosis, the meiotic products can be analyzed as the ascomycete fungus, Sordaria fimicola. Sordaria can be used as a model to study meiotic segregation. The trait followed was the ascospore color. Ascospore color is a single gene trait therefore it is easily observed under a light microspore. Which allele is dominant is very …

…to cross wild-type and tan-type Sordaria, was successfully accomplished; consequently one learned various things about gene crossing over. One can acknowledge that ascospores are haploid because they are formed by meiosis is asci. As a result, ascospore color is a single gene trait, so there is no dominant or recessive allele for ascospore color. Literature Cited: Campbell et al. 1999. Biology. Canada: Addison Wesley Longman. Jordan, F, 2003. Biology of Organisms Laboratory Manual. New Orleans: Loyola University.