Sex-linked Inheritance in DrosophilaMorgan, Thomas Hunt
Science
Sex-linked Inheritance in Drosophila
Morgan, Thomas Hunt
Drosophila; Heredity
When two or more sex-linked factors are present in a male they are always
transmitted together to his daughters, as must necessarily be the case if
they are carried by the unpaired X chromosome. If such a male carrying, let
us say, two sex-linked factors, is mated to a wild female, his daughters
will have one X chromosome containing the factors for both characters,
derived from the father, and another X chromosome that contains the factors
that are normal for these two factors (the normal allelomorphs). The sons
of such a female will get one or the other of these two kinds of
chromosomes, and should be expected to be like the one or the other
grandparent. In fact, most of the sons are of these two kinds. But, in
addition, there are sons that show one only of the two original mutant
characters. Clearly an interchange has taken place between the two X
chromosomes in the female in such a way that a piece of one chromosome has
been exchanged for the homologous piece of the other. The same conclusion
is reached if the cross is made in such a way that the same two sex-linked
characters enter, but, one from the mother and the other from the father.
The daughter gets one of her sex chromosomes from her mother and the other
from her father. She should produce, then, two kinds of sons, one like her
mother and one like her father. In fact, the majority of her sons are of
these two kinds, but, in addition, there are two other kinds of sons, one
kind showing both mutant characters, the other kind showing normal
characters. Here again the results must be due to interchange between the
two X's in the hybrid female. _The number of_ {8} _the sons due to exchange
in the two foregoing crosses is always the same, although they are of
contrary classes._ Clearly, then, the interchange takes place irrespective
of the way in which the factors enter the cross. We call those classes that
arise through interchange between the chromosomes "cross-over classes" or
merely "cross-overs." The phenomenon of holding together we speak of as
linkage.
By taking a number of factors into consideration at the same time it has
been shown that _crossing-over involves large pieces of the chromosomes_.
The X chromosomes undergo crossing-over in about 60 per cent of the cases,
and the crossing-over may occur at any point along the chromosome. When it
occurs once, whole ends (or halves even) go over together and the exchange
is always equivalent. If crossing-over occurs twice at the same time a
middle piece of one chromosome is intercalated between the ends of the
other chromosome. This process is called double crossing-over. It occurs
not oftener than in about 10 per cent of cases for the total length of the
X chromosome. Triple crossing-over in the X chromosome is extremely rare
and has been observed only about a half dozen times.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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