Drosophila courtship behaviors are primarily governed by two master regulatory genes: fruitless (fru) and doublesex (dsx). Both of these genes undergo sex-specific splicing to produce male-specific transcription factors that drive male-specific courtship behaviors. In the olfactory system, there are three types of olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) that express fru and regulate male-specific courtship behaviors: Or47b, Or67d and Ir84a. It is our hypothesis that olfactory sensation can alter courtship behavior by reprogramming the chromatin state around fru and dsx. In order to examine this hypothesis, Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) using antibodies for RNA Polymerase II was performed on both Ir84a mutant and wild-type flies. Analysis of the qPCR results using fru primers from both mutant and wild-type flies suggest that **the chromatin conformation around fru in the Ir84a mutants was more closed than that of the wild type. This difference in chromatin state translates to a variance in expression rates of fru and thus influences the behavioral traits of the flies.
**this is what the expected result is but there are two other potential results
