PARTIAL DOMINANCE OF EMS-INDUCED MUTATIONS AFFECTING VIABILITY IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER

Rayla Greenberg Temin ¹

¹ Department of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706

More than 700 EMS-treated second chromosomes marked with either cn (cinnabar) or bw (brown), and derived from long-inbred stocks, were measured for their heterozygous effects on viability in both isogenic (homozygous) and nonisogenic (heterozygous) backgrounds. Each test was replicated five times. When the background was homozygous, flies heterozygous for a treated chromosome were an average of 2.1% less viable, per 0.005 m EMS, than flies heterozygous for an untreated chromosome. Classified according to their homogous effect in an accompanying series of crosses, the lethal-bearing chromosomes (L), which carry genes of less drastic effects as well, reduced the viability of their heterozygous carriers by 3.3%, severe detrimentals (D_s) by 2.2%, and mild detrimentals (D_m) by 1.2% at this dose. In the heterozygous background, the mean heterozygous disadvantage for the entire group was 1%, or about half as large.——When computed separately for each count from a single mating, the heterozygous disadvantage was consistently greatest for the earliest counts (4.8%), next highest for the middle count (0.8%), and lowest in the latest count (0.5%), in the homozygous background, indicating that mutant heterozygotes were delayed in time of emergence. The figures in the heterozygous background were, again, reduced, but in the same direction.—The relative viability disadvantage of the cn marker was about 2 times greater in the homozygous than in the heterozygous background, further supporting the conclusion that the homozygous background can accentuate differences. The enhancement of treatment and marker effects could be a direct result of the level of background heterozygosity per se or attributable to the reduced vigor of the inbred strain.—Dominance, a measure of the heterozygous effect of a mutant relative to its homozygous effect, is greater for genes with small homozygous disadvantage than for more drastic genes. In the homozygous background the average dominance for lethals was 0.019 in contrast to 0.183 for mild detrimentals, supporting other published results suggesting that genes with milder effect, because they occur more frequently, have a greater impact on a population.—The homozygous D:L ratio of EMS mutations was 0.266 and the D_m: L ratio, 0.092, which are lower than comparable load ratios for spontaneous mutations, but greater than for X-ray induced mutations.

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