Alloimmunization in sheep revealed an antigen specificity B1 which is also to be found in cattle sera. The molecular weight of the protein carrying B1 was greater in sheep than in cattle, whilst in both cases its isoelectric point was at pH 6·2. The electrophoretic position of the antigen suggests that the molecule carrying B1 might be a β-globulin. Family studies indicated that in both species B1 was inherited in a simple Mendelian manner, as if it were a product of a dominant allele B1 at an autosomal locus B.

The colour difference (crimson and yellow) in Kerria lacca (Kerr) was used to test the ‘Lecanoid’ system of chromosome behaviour proposed on cytological evidence. The colour strains bred true for colour. Reciprocal matings between the colour strains produced only crimson sons and daughters, confirming that the colour difference is not sex-linked and that the male is somatically a diploid. The phenotypes of the F2 and the backcross generations differed according to the heterozygosity and the direction of cross of the F1 parents, since heterozygous females produced two kinds of gamete but heterozygous males produced only the maternal kind. Thus, while elimination of the paternal gene and hence chromosome was confirmed during the formation of male sex-cells, demonstration of somatic diploidy of the male is not compatible with a ‘Lecanoid’ system in K. lacca. Instead, the available cytogenetic evidence is suggestive of a chromosome system with heterochromatization and elimination of the paternal chromosome-set confined to the male germ line.

A subcellular dimension, the length of the spermatozoan midpiece, has been the subject of a two-way selection programme in mice. After thirteen generations of within-family selection the divergence between the selected lines amounted to 5·4 phenotypic standard deviations. The realized heritability was found to be 0·76 ± 0·02, dominance and commonenvironmental effects being apparently very small. The reality of the selection response was verified in measurements on live spermatozoa. Other measurements have shown that the change in the length of the midpiece has been independent of its width, and has occurred without a proportionate change in the length of the main-piece of the flagellum. An electron microscope study has shown that the selection has, in fact, brought about changes in the quantity of mitochondrial material in the sperm cells.

Plants of Triticum aestivum (2n = 6x = 42) ditelocentric 5BL were treated with EMS in order to produce mutations in the 5B system by which meiotic pairing between homoeologous chromosomes is normally prevented. To check for the occurrence of mutation T. aestivum ditelo-5BL plants were pollinated with rye (Secale cereale 2n = 14) and meiosis was examined in the resulting hybrids.

Wheat-rye hybrids were scored for the presence of mutants when the wheat parents were either the EMS-treated wheat plants, or their selfed derivatives, or their progenies obtained after pollination with untreated euploid individuals.

Mutants were detected by each of these procedures and mutant gametes were produced by the treated ditelocentric plants with frequencies between 1·5 and 2·5%, but there were differences between the mutants in the extent to which homoeologous pairing occurred in the derived wheat-rye hybrids. The differences may have resulted from the occurrence of mutation at different loci or to different extents at the same locus.

Two mutants, Mutant 10/13 and Mutant 61, were fixed in the homozygous condition. Mutant 10/13 was made homozygous both in the 5BL ditelocentric and in the euploid conditions but these genotypes regularly formed 21 bivalents at meiosis, and there was no indication of homoeologous pairing although the mutant 10/13 gave rise to homoeologous pairing in wheat-rye hybrids.

The DNA repair hypothesis for the maintenance of sex states that recombination is necessary for the repair of double-strand DNA damage. In a closed (mitotic) genetic system crossing-over generates homozygosity. This reduces fitness if deleterious recessive alleles become expressed. Thus, outcrossing is required to restore heterozygosity destroyed by recombination. The repair hypothesis is tested by comparing outcrossing sexuality with a hypothetical parthenogenic strategy (the Prudent Reparator) which destroys as little heterozygosity during repair as possible. In the Prudent Reparator, repair of double-strand DNA damage results in a small amount of homozygosity due to gene conversion only, since this process does not render outside markers homozygous. Diploidy, deleterious recessives, multiplicative fitness and linkage equilibrium in mutation-selection balance are assumed. The average fitness of this population increases, and complementation (i.e. masking of recessives in heterozygous form) decreases with the rate of damage per locus. The equilibrium fitness of the Prudent Reparator can be well above that of the sexual population. A lower complementation ability of parthenogens may not be an impenetrable barrier to their successful establishment if the invader's genome is relatively uncontaminated by mutant alleles: there are always such genotypes in the sexual population. Thus, the Prudent Reparator could solve the problem of repairing damage as well as that of invading an existing outcrossing population. As we do not see this strategy widely adopted instead of sexuality, the repair hypothesis is likely to miss some essential feature of the evolution of sex.

The alcohol dehydrogenase-1 gene in maize presents advantages for mutational analysis. Foremost among these is the ability to chemically select ADH-negative and ADH-low gametophytes owing to their resistance to allyl alcohol vapour. Immature tassels were irradiated with either 220 kV X-rays or 400 MeV/amu accelerated neon-ions; spontaneous mutants were also selected and recovered. RBE for neon-20 was about 5. A total of 70 presumptive mutants were placed into one of four classes on the basis of allozyme profiles following electrophoresis and ADH staining: (A) dysfunction, (B) underproducer, (C) overproducer, and (D) up-Adh2 gene. Mutants have been recovered and confirmed in the first three classes. These include two male-transmissible deletion-type lesions induced by X-rays, five underproducer transpositions and one overproducer transposition induced by neon-20. Certain of the neoninduced alleles are unstable in their expression. All 70 mutants are chromosomal aberrations; no intragenic lesions were recovered although our experimental design would have preferentially recovered them if they had occurred.

The Discussion considers the mutagenic action of ionizing radiation, and especially the well-documented differences between maize and Drosophila data. In particular, the effect of these chromosome derangements on the ‘programmable’ component(s) of the Adhl cistron is discussed.

The possibility that changes in latent viruses would contribute to the differentiation of sublines in inbred strains of mice was investigated using the Bittner virus and the BALB/c strain of mice. The results show that, at least for this combination, there is no reason for implicating latent viruses in subline differentiation.

The genome of the house fly, Musca domestica, contains an active transposable element system, called Hermes. Using PCR and inverse PCR we amplified and sequenced overlapping segments of several Hermes elements and from these data we have constructed a 2749 bp consensus Hermes DNA sequence. Hermes termini are composed of 17 bp imperfect inverted repeats that are almost identical to the inverted terminal repeats of the hobo element of Drosophila melanogaster. Full length Hermes elements contain a single long ORF capable of encoding a protein of 612 amino acids which is 55% identical to the amino acid sequence of the hobo transposase. Comparison of the ends of the Hermes and hobo elements to those of the Ac element of Zea mays, and the Tam3 element of Antirrhinum majus, as well as several other plant and insect elements, revealed a conserved terminal sequence motif. Thus Hermes is clearly a member of the hobo, Ac and Tam3 (hAT) transposable element family, other members of which include the Tagl element from Arabidopsis thaliana and the Bg element from Zea mays. The evolution of this class of transposable elements and the potential utility of Hermes as a genetic tool in M. domestica and related species are discussed.

Mutations in the gatB gene as well as mutations in the putative structural gene gatA and the positive acting regulatory gene intA can affect γ-amino-n-butyrate (GABA) transaminase (EC 2.6.1.19) levels in the ascomycete fungus Aspergillus nidulans. Partial or complete loss of function mutations in gatA, gatB and ssuA, which specifies succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase, can lead to accumulation of ω-amino acids resulting in pseudo-constitutivity and elevated expression of (retained) activities under intA control. These regulatory effects underlie selective methods for gatB−, ssuA− and leaky gatA− mutations. However, all three gatB− alleles which have been selected lead only to partial loss of GABA transaminase activity as judged by both in vivo and in vitro criteria. It has not been established whether the leakiness of these three gatB− mutations is an allele-specific or a locus-specific effect and whether or not the GABA transaminase present in gatB− strains differs from the wild type enzyme. Thus the role of the gatB product remains to be elucidated. The gatB gene is not closely linked to any other gene involved in ω-amino metabolism or related pathways.

This paper examines the relation between chromosomal and nuclear-gene divergence in 28 wild populations of the house mouse semi-species, Mus musculus domesticus, in Western Europe and North Africa. Besides describing the karyotypes of 15 of these populations and comparing them to those of 13 populations for which such information was already known, it reports the results of an electrophoretic survey of proteins encoded by 34 nuclear loci in all 28 populations. Karyotypic variation in this taxon involves only centric (or Robertsonian) fusions which often differ in arm combination and number between chromosomal races. The electrophoretic analysis showed that the amount of genic variation within Robertsonian (Rb) populations was similar to that for all-acrocentric populations, i.e. bearing the standard karyotype. Moreover, divergence between the two types of populations was extremely low. These results imply that centric fusions in mice have not modified either the level or the nature of genic variability. The genetic similarity between Rb and all-acrocentric populations is not attributed to the persistence of gene flow, since multiple fusions cause marked reproductive isolation. Rather, we attribute this extreme similarity to the very recent origin of chromosomal races in Europe. Furthermore, genic diversity measures suggest that geographically separated Rb populations have in situ and independent origins. Thus, Rb translocations are probably not unique events, but originated repeatedly. Two models are presented to explain how the rapid fixation of a series of chromosomal rearrangements can occur in a population without lowering variability in the nuclear genes. The first model assumes that chromosomal mutation rates are between 10−3 and 10−4 and that populations underwent a series of transient bottlenecks in which the effective population size did not fall below 35. In the second model, genic variability is restored following severe bottlenecks, through gene flow and recombination.

We study multi-locus models for the accumulation of disadvantagenous mutant alleles in diploid populations. The theory used is closely related to the quasi-species theory of molecular evolution. The stationary mutant distribution may either be localized close to a peak in the fitness landscape or delocalized throughout sequence space. In some cases there is a sharp transition between these two cases known as an error threshold. We study a multiplicative fitness landscape where the fitness of an individual with j homozygous mutant loci and k heterozygous loci is wjk = (1 − s)j (1 − hs)k. For a sexual population in this landscape there are two types of solution separated by an error threshold. For a parthenogenetic population there may be three types of solution and two error thresholds for some values of h. For a population reproducing by selfing the solution is independent of h, since the frequency of heterozygous individuals is negligible. The mean fitnesses of the populations depend on the reproductive method even for the multiplicative landscape. The sexual may have a higher or lower fitness than the parthenogen, depending on the values of h and u/s. Selfing leads to a higher mean fitness than either sexual reproduction or parthenogenesis. We also study a fitness landscape with epistatic interactions with wjk = exp(− s(2j + k)α). The sexual population has a higher fitness than the parthenogen when α > 1. This confirms previous theories that sexual reproduction is advantageous in cases of synergistic epistasis. The mean fitness of a selfing population was found to be higher than both the sexual and the parthenogen over the range of parameter values studied. We discuss these results in relation to the theory of the evolution of sex. The fitness of the stationary distribution in cases where unfavourable mutations accumulation is one factor which could explain the observed prevalence of sexual reproduction in natural populations, although other factors may be more important in many cases.

A variable delay among mating pairs in the time between contact formation and the initiation of F transfer was found. The conjugation process has no effect on the multiplication of the recipient cell.

In liquid medium newly infecting F-particles multiply faster than the host cell.

The experiment strongly suggests that the number of episomes per cell is small and that the distribution of the F-factor among the daughter cells is non-random.

It is hypothesized that the products of Neurospora rec+ genes mask recombinators such as cog by modifying DNA and that unmodified recombinators act as recognition sites for an endonuclease with scission properties like those of the type I restriction enzymes found in E. coli. These cut the DNA in both strands at some variable distance from a recognition site. Repair of a two strand gap initiated in this way would require DNA synthesis using the information contained in the homologous DNA duplex, leading to gene conversion. Crossing over could follow from resolution of two Holliday structures formed during gap repair. The hypothesis explains the polarity in the frequency of conversion events across genetic loci, the observation that chromosomes carrying recombinators are more often converted than is the homologue, and how recombinators can initiate conversion at a distance, as suggested by the pattern of conversion events in the his-3 locus in crosses heterozygous for the translocation TM429.