The highly popular FlyLab program (formerly known as Virtual FlyLab) is now available in a new Java version. With this program, anyone can play the role of a research geneticist. Students learn the principles of genetic inheritance by designing matings between fruit flies with different genetic mutations. After selecting the mutations for the two parent flies and clicking the "Mate" button, FlyLab applies the correct rules of genetic inheritance to the mutations to obtain genetic information for the offspring. Once the results of a simulated cross have been examined, students can perform a statistical test of the data by chi-square analysis. The statistics can be examined to accept or reject a hypothesis for the predicted phenotypic ratio of offspring for each cross.

With FlyLab, it is possible to study multiple generations of offspring, and perform testcrosses and backcrosses. FlyLab is a versatile program. It can be used to learn elementary genetic principles such as dominance, recessiveness, and Mendelian ratios, or more complex concepts such as sex-linkage, epistasis, recombination, and genetic mapping.

The purpose of this laboratory is to:

• Simulate basic principles of genetic inheritance based on Mendelian genetics by designing and performing crosses between fruit flies.
• Promote the understanding of the relationship between an organism's genotype and its phenotype.
• Demonstrate the importance of statistical analysis to accept or reject a hypothesis.
• Use genetic crosses and recombination data to identify the location of genes on a chromosome by genetic mapping.