Sex-linked Inheritance in DrosophilaMorgan, Thomas Hunt
Science
Sex-linked Inheritance in Drosophila
Morgan, Thomas Hunt
Drosophila; Heredity
In a cross of spot to black it was found that the double recessive, spot
black, flies that appear in F_2 have, in addition to the spot on the
abdomen, another spot on the scutellum and a light streak on the thorax.
These two latter characters ("dot and dash") are very sharply marked and
conspicuous when the flies are young, but they are only juvenile characters
and disappear as the flies become older. The spot flies never show the "dot
and dash" clearly, and it only comes out when black acts as a developer.
These characters furnish a good illustration of the fact that mutant gens
ordinarily affect many parts of the body, though these secondary effects
often pass unnoticed.
In the F_2 of the cross of spot by black one yellow black fly appeared,
although none are expected, on the assumption that spot and yellow {34} are
allelomorphic. Unless due to crossing-over it must have been a mutation
from spot back to yellow. Improbable as this may seem to those who look
upon mutations as due to losses from the germ-plasm, yet we have records of
several other cases where similar mutations "backwards" have taken place,
notably in the case of eosin to white, under conditions where the
alternative interpretation of crossing-over is excluded.
SABLE.
(Plate I, figure 2.)
In an experiment involving black body-color[3] a fly appeared (July 19,
1912) whose body-color differed slightly from ordinary black in that the
trident mark on the thorax was sharper and the color itself was brighter
and clearer. This fly, a male, was mated to black females and gave some
black males and females, but also some gray (wild body-color) males and
females, showing not only that he was heterozygous for ordinary recessive
black, but at the same time that his dark color must be due to another kind
of black. The gray F_1 flies when mated together gave a series of gray and
dark flies in F_2 about as follows: In the females 3 grays to 1 dark; in
the males 3 grays to 5 dark in color. The result indicated that the new
black color, which we call sable, was due to a sex-linked factor. It was
difficult to discover which of the heterogeneous F_2 males were the new
blacks. Suspected males were bred (singly) to wild females, and the F_2
dark males, from those cultures that gave the closest approach to a 2 gray
[female] : 1 gray [male] : 1 dark [male], were bred to their sisters in
pairs in order to obtain sable females and males. Thus stock homozygous for
sable but still containing black as an impurity was obtained. It became
necessary to free it from black by successive individual out-crossings to
wild flies and extractions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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