Sex-linked Inheritance in Drosophila

Excerpt

Although the ratio of 3 to 1 in which contrasted characters reappear in the second or F generation is sometimes referred to as Mendel's Law of Heredity, the really significant discovery of Mendel was not the 3 to 1 ratio, but the segregation of the characters (or rather, of the germinal representatives of the characters) which is the underlying cause of the appearance of the ratio. Mendel saw that the characters with which he worked must be represented in the germ-cells by specific producers (which we may call factors), and that in the fertilization of an individual showing one member of a pair of contrasting characters by an individual showing the other member, the factors for the two characters meet in the hybrid, and that when the hybrid forms germ-cells the factors segregate from each other without having been contaminated one by the other. In consequence, half the germ-cells contain one member of the pair and the other half the other member. When two such hybrid individuals are bred together the combinations of the pure germ-cells give three classes of offspring, namely, two hybrids to one of each of the pure forms. Since the hybrids usually can not be distinguished from one of the pure forms, the observed ratio is 3 of one kind (the dominant) to 1 of the other kind (the recessive).

There is another discovery that is generally included as a part of Mendel's Law. We may refer to this as the assortment in the germ-cells of the products of the segregation of two or more pairs of factors. If assortment takes place according to chance, then definite F ratios result, such as 9:3:3:1 (for two pairs) and 27:9:9:9:3:3:3:1 (for three pairs), etc. Mendel obtained such ratios in peas, and until quite recently it has been generally supposed that free assortment is the rule when several pairs of characters are involved. But, as we shall try to show, the emphasis that has been laid on these ratios has obscured the really important part of Mendel's discovery, namely, segregation; for with the discovery in 1906 of the fact of linkage the ratios based on free assortment were seen to hold only for combinations of certain pairs of characters, not for other combinations. But the principle of segregation still holds for each pair of characters. Hence segregation remains the cardinal point of Mendelism. Segregation is to-day Mendel's Law.

LINKAGE AND CHROMOSOMES.

It has been found that when certain characters enter a cross together (i. e., from the same parent) their factors tend to pass into the same gamete of the hybrid, with the result that other ratios than the chance ratios described by Mendel are found in the F generation. Such cases of linkage have been described in several forms, but nowhere on so extensive a scale as in the pomace fly, Drosophila ampelophila. Here, over a hundred characters that have been investigated as to their linkage relations are found to fall into four groups, the members of each group being linked, in the sense that they tend to be transmitted to the gametes in the same combinations in which they entered from the parents. The members of each group give free assortment with the members of any of the other three groups. A most significant fact in regard to the linkage shown by the Drosophila mutants is that the number of linked groups corresponds to the number of pairs of the chromosomes. If the gens for the Mendelian characters are carried by the chromosomes we should expect to find demonstrated in Drosophila that there are as many groups of characters that are inherited together as there are pairs of chromosomes, provided the chromosomes retain their individuality. The evidence that the chromosomes are structural elements of the cell that perpetuate themselves at every division has continually grown stronger. That factors have the same distribution as the chromosomes is clearly seen in the case of sex-linked characters, where it can be shown that any character of this type appears in those individuals which from the known distribution of the X chromosomes must also contain the chromosome in question. For example, in Drosophila, as in many other insects, there are two X chromosomes in the cells of the female and one X chromosome in the cells of the male. There is in the male, in addition to the X, also a Y chromosome, which acts as its mate in synapsis and reduction....