Assessment of variability within electromorphs of alcohol dehydrogenase in Drosophila melanogaster

Ninety-six isochromosomal lines of Drosophila melanogaster from a natural population were screened electrophoretically for unusual mobility variants at the alcohol dehydrogenase locus, using a total of eight conditions of acrylamide electrophoresis. No additional mobility variation was found among the 50 "slow" and 46 "fast" mobility lines beyond that detected by standard methods of electrophoresis. However, two thermostability variants recovered by R. MILKMAN from a natural population, whose electrophoretic mobilities were previously thought to be distinguishable from those of "standard" alleles, are distinguishable from the standard electromorphs by these procedures. These results suggest that the Adh locus, although polymorphic, does not harbor substantial amounts of "hidden" allelic variability. This study also reports the appearance of substantial mobility variation among isogenic lines that can be induced under specific conditions of sample preparation involving the pretreatment of samples with NAD and acetone. However, genetic analysis demonstrates that this variability cannot be attributed to allelic differences at the structural locus, but instead appears to be dependent upon the concentration of the enzyme in a sample. These results are discussed in relation to the distribution of allelic variation at other enzyme loci.