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Maternal influence upon the V-type gene position effect in Drosophila melanogaster

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Summary

We have studied the influence of various factors on the V-type position effect of the white gene transposed to heterochromatin as a result of different chromosome rearraugements in D. melanogaster. Variegation due to the white gene position effect is much weaker if the flies have received Dp(1;3)wvco from parental males, and not females. The origin of the chromosome rearrangement does not have this influence in the case of T(1;4)wm5 or has it to insignificant extent in the case of In(1)wm4. The Y-chromosome in maternal genome strongly suppresses Dp(1;3)wvco-induced variegation even in the progeny which has not received an extra Y-chromosome but only if this progeny gets Dp(1;3)wvco from the same female. The low temperature (16° C) at which parental females have developed, considerably affects the position effect in the progeny with Dp(1;3)wvco, whereas the temperature of males' development has no influence at all. The maternal temperature effect occurs also when Dp(1;3)wvco has come down from the father, though it is stronger if the mother subjected to low temperature treatment bore the rearrangement. The influence of temperature seems to take effect at the final stages of oogenesis.

The data obtained lead one to suppose that the influence of genotypic and external factors on variegation is passed to the next generation of flies in different ways. The direction of crosses and additional Y-chromosome heterochromatin in the maternal genome seem to affect variegation in the progeny through changes in the properties (structure) of the chromosome rearrangement expressing the position effect. As to the temperature of the mothers development, only a small part of its influence may be accounted for by the same mechanism, whereas most of the temperature influence seems to be passed on through other components of the nucleus or through the cytoplasm.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Molecular Genetics, USSR Academy of Sciences, 123182, Moscow, USSR

    R. B. Khesin & V. N. Bashkirov

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  1. R. B. Khesin
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  2. V. N. Bashkirov
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Communicated by D. Goldfarb

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Khesin, R.B., Bashkirov, V.N. Maternal influence upon the V-type gene position effect in Drosophila melanogaster . Molec. Gen. Genet. 163, 327–334 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00271962

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