Transcription analysis of alcohol dehydrogenase null alleles from natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster.

Southern analysis of 19 Adh null activity alleles isolated from Tasmanian populations of Drosophila melanogaster have shown that there are no detectable insertions or deletions in an 11.8-kb region that contains the gene. Northern blot analyses of the null alleles have shown that they all produce a transcript about 100 bases longer than that produced by the normal allele and they accumulate a precursor of 1800 bases. The amount of the major transcript produced by the null alleles is about 10% of that produced by normal alleles. The molecular properties of the null alleles suggest that they share a common origin.