If genetics is very new to you, here are two brief reference sheets, one on classical genetics and one on molecular biology, that you may find helpful.
📎 A Brief Introduction to Classical Genetics_v2.docx
📎 A Brief Introduction to Molecular Biology_v2.docx
Read Drosophila Workers Unite! A laboratory manual for working with Drosophila by Michele Markstein
Read chapters 1 and 4 of Fly Pushing: The Theory and Practice of Drosophila Genetics by Ralph Greenspan- we have a lab copy and here is a digital copy
Do the Genetic Crossing Schemes Problem Set. This problem set asks you to build a desired final stock from the given starting flies. These particular crossing schemes are chosen specifically to be representative of the types of basic stock building you’ll likely want to do while in this lab. Here are the answers, but to best learn how to do fly crosses, it is highly recommended that you solve the problem set without looking at the answers and discuss it with a more experienced lab member.
To learn more about Drosophila genetics–including how sex determination works in flies, how to read/write fly genotypes, how balancers work, how to use recombination to build stocks, how transgenes work and how to make new ones, and mutations–see the Classical Drosophila Genetics - A practical guide powerpoint. There are paragraphs of text in the Notes section of each slide that elaborate on that slide’s topic, so you should download the slides and view them through powerpoint.
This guide by Dr. Andreas Prokop is also a great resource for learning fly husbandry and genetics.
📎 Drosophila_genetics_guide_v6.2.pdf
Here’s the powerpoint from a December 2021 WLU on fly genetics and fly work. The first section includes slides on the practicalities of actually doing fly crosses (e.g. types of food, how many flies to put in a cross, working with CO2, etc.); the second section is copied over from the Classical Drosophila Genetics powerpoint (see above); the last few slides have some more quiz questions to really test your understanding of fly genetics. Reading the slides under the fly husbandry section will be useful before doing fly work.