The Problem of Gene Activity in the Sperm of Drosophila melanogaster
| Autor: | J. D. McCloskey |
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| Rok vydání: | 1966 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | The American Naturalist. 100:211-218 |
| ISSN: | 1537-5323 0003-0147 |
| DOI: | 10.1086/282414 |
| Popis: | In 1927 Muller and Settles suggested that the genes within the spermatozoan of Drosophila melanogaster are probably non-functional. Their argument was based on the absence of any differential recovery between Xand Ybearing sperm, even after storage from one to two weeks, although the latter type lacked all the sex-linked genes in the species. They also failed to detect any difference when the two sperm types differed by a known autosomal deficiency. Since these experiments it has been commonly assumed that this holds true for animals in general, although specific evidence is completely lacking. It is of some interest, then, that we are now presented with a case where this appears not to be true. Braden (1958) and subsequently others (Dunn, 1959; Yanagisawa, Dunn and Bennett, 1961) have examined the so-called "male transmission ratio" in the house mouse, where certain tailless alleles are recovered with much higher frequencies than others found in the same heterozygote. They have explained this on the basis of a difference in the physiology of the two kinds of sperm. This appears to be the only case in higher animals where it has been established that properties of a gamete are determined by the specific genes carried by that gamete. This is, of course, quite different from the situation in plants where the genotype of the gametophyte strongly influences the properties of this phase. In view of Braden's results, it seems appropriate to reinvestigate the problem in Drosophila melanogaster, where material now available makes it possible to screen the total chromosome complement for genes capable of functioning in the haploid phase. The evidence presented in this paper shows that an intensive search for genes that affect viability of the sperm has revealed that either they do not exist at all, or that they must have special properties which render them undetectable under the experimental conditions employed here. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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