Sex-linked Inheritance in DrosophilaMorgan, Thomas Hunt
Science
Sex-linked Inheritance in Drosophila
Morgan, Thomas Hunt
Drosophila; Heredity
In May 1913 there appeared in a culture of flies with gray body-color a few
males with a greenish-black tinge to the body and legs. The trident pattern
on the thorax, which is almost invisible in many wild flies, was here quite
marked. A green male was mated to wild females and gave in F_2 a close
approach to a 2:1:1 ratio. The green reappeared only in the F_2 males, but
the separation of green from gray was not as easy or complete as desirable.
From subsequent generations a pure stock of green was made. A green female
by wild male gave 138 wild-type females and 127 males which were greenish.
This green color varies somewhat in depth, so that some of these F_1 males
could not have been separated with certainty from a mixed culture of green
and gray males.
The results of these two experiments show that green is a sex-linked
melanistic character like sable, but the somatic difference produced is
much less than in the case of sable, so that the new mutation, although
genetically definite, is of little practical value. We have found several
eye-colors which differed from the red color of the wild fly by very small
differences. With some of these we have worked successfully by using
another eye-color as a developer. For example, the double recessive
vermilion "clear" is far more easily distinguished from vermilion than is
clear from red. But it is no small task to make up the stocks {73}
necessary for such a special study. In the case of green we might perhaps
have employed a similar method, performing all experiments with a common
difference from the gray in all flies used.
CHROME.
In a stock of forked fused there appeared, September 15, 1913, three males
of a brownish-yellow body-color. They were uniform in color, without any of
the abdominal banding so striking in other body-colors. Even the tip of the
abdomen lacked the heavy pigmentation which is a marked secondary sexual
character of the male. About 20 or more of these males appeared in the same
culture. This appearance of many males showing a mutant character and the
non-appearance of corresponding females is usual for sex-linked characters.
In such cases females appear in the next generation, as they did in this
case when the chrome males were mated to their sisters in mass cultures.
Since both females and males of chrome were on hand, it should have been an
easy matter to continue the stock, but many matings failed, and it was
necessary to resort to breeding in heterozygous form. The chrome, however,
gradually disappeared from the stock. Such a difficult sex-linked mutation
as this could be successfully handled (like a lethal) if it could be mated
to a double recessive whose members lie one on each side of the mutant, but
in the case of chrome this was not attempted soon enough to save the stock.
LETHAL 3.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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