Genetical Research

Table of Contents - 01 February 1984 - Volume 43, Issue 01  

Short Paper

Reduction of wild-type X chromosomes with the Ybb− chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster

Gioacchino Palumboa1 p1, Sharyn A. Endowa1 c1 and R. Scott Hawleya2

a1 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina 27710

a2 Departments of Genetics and Molecular Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, Bronx, New York 10461

SUMMARY

The Ybb− chromosome has been previously shown to induce reduction of X chromosome ribosomal genes in Xbb / Ybb− or Xbb+ / Ybb− flies. These reduction events are presumed to arise as one of the two products of unequal sister chromatid exchanges, which result in both magnified and reduced products. Bobbed reduced chromosomes may also arise as products of other recombinative events such as intrachromatid deletions. In this report we use the Ybb− chromosome to reduce the number of ribosomal genes present on X chromosomes from two wild-type stocks under ‘non-magnifying’ conditions. We then show that the bobbed reduced X chromosomes show no detectable difference in their Southern blot rDNA patterns when compared with the parental wild-type X chromosome. This indicates that reduction events do not preferentially delete certain repeat classes, and supports previous observations that the repeat types present in the D. melanogaster X chromosome nucleolus organizer are not significantly clustered.

(Received November 03 1983)

Correspondence:

c1 To whom correspondence should be addressed.

p1 Current address: Istituto di Genetica, Università di Bari, Bari, Italy.

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