Cytogenetic localization by variation in electrophoretic allozyme phenotype: Drosophila Odh

A gene-dosage effect is characteristic of eukaryotic structural genes and is therefore useful in gene mapping. However, attributing quantitative variations in enzyme activity to a gene-dosage effect or other putative regulatory loci can be suspect when the locus in question may be inducible by variations in culture conditions. The problem of controlling for allele-specific variations in activity and regulation can be circumvented in Drosophila melanogaster by the use of synthetic duplications and deficiencies in conjunction with enzyme polymorphism. A method for constructing segmental aneupliods heterozygous for electrophoretic variants of octanol dehydrogenase (Odh) is presented which permitted variations in allozyme phenotype and enzyme activity--which show a strict dosage dependency--to be produced simultaneously. The structural gene region for Odh was identified using T(Y;A) stocks and the deficiency M(3)S31 was used to assign the locus to polytene band region 86D1-4. With this method a segmental aneuploid survey of Drosophila for purposes of gene localization can be accomplished in one generation with appropriate stocks.