I-R hybrid dysgenesis in Drosophila melanogaster: nature and site specificity of induced recessive lethals.

This paper presents results of the genetic and cytological analysis of 144 sex-linked recessive lethals, plus 1 non-lethal. All of them were induced by I-R hybrid dysgenesis. This collection of mutants was pooled from experiments involving inducer chromosomes that differ in the chromosomal position of their I elements. Our results show that 30% of the recessive lethals are associated with chromosomal rearrangements which depend on the strength of the I-R interaction. These lethals are induced on both inducer- and reactive-origin chromosomes, and their frequency is dependent on the structure of the inducer chromosome used. The I-R-induced lethals occur along the entire length of the X chromosome. These sites probably correspond to specific loci which are more or less homologous with I. The complementation relationships showed that some specific loci were more frequently involved in all the lethal mutations tested. The most sensitive loci are, in order of observation: l(1)J1, ct, f, ma1 and m. Among induced recessive lethals considered to be point mutation, complementation tests showed that many of them are in fact multilocus deficiencies which can be detected only at the molecular level. It seems that the production of I-R rearrangements (cytologically visible or not) may be the most important mechanism leading to lethal mutations. These mutations probably occur during the transposition of I elements, hence their importance from an evolutionary standpoint.