ALLELIC VARIANTS AT THE XANTHINE DEHYDROGENASE LOCUS AFFECTING ENZYME ACTIVITY IN DROSOPHILA PSEUDOOBSCURA

Satya Prakash ¹

¹ Department of Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627

Quantitative studies of enzyme activity on gels show about four-fold differences in enzyme activity of different xanthine dehydrogenase (XDH ) alleles. At least three different activity classes could be distinguished among the 23 strains isogenic for the XDH locus. No association of high activity with the high frequency electromorph was observed; instead, the low frequency electromorphs had 0.5 to 2 times the activity of the high frequency electromorph. The frequency of low activity, high activity and intermediate activity XDH alleles among these 23 lines is 0.13, 0.09, and 0.78, respectively.