A comparative study of the esterase-5 locus in Drosophila pseudoobscura, D. persimilis and D. miranda

Electrophoretic phenotypes of the esterase-5 locus were examined in the sibling species D. pseudoobscura, D. persimilis and D. miranda. D. persimilis alleles were found to have uniformly higher charge on monomers than corresponding alleles of either D. pseudoobscura or D. miranda. Consequently, D. persimilis shares no alleles in common with either D. pseudoobscura or D. miranda, while the latter two species share a number of alleles. It was discovered that by increasing the concentration of acrylamide gel and increasing the length of migration, more allelic differences could be distinguished. Also more alleles were discovered by examining monomer mobility in addition to dimer mobility. In D. persimilis and D. miranda it was found that the previously known high frequency allelic classes broke down into several allelic classes. A test of goodness-of-fit to the infinite alleles model was done and a rough agreement with the model was found.