Relations between Factors Controlling Crossing over and Mutability in Males of DROSOPHILA ANANASSAE.

Several stocks, selected because they carried previously identified factors governing either crossing over in males or mutability, were examined to determine whether the effects of these factors are restricted to one or the other process. Neither of two dominant enhancers of male crossing over had detectable effects on Minute mutation frequencies among progenies of assayed F(1) males. Genetically equivalent F(1) males monitored for crossing over showed no unequivocal effect of either of three mutators (two dominant and one extrachromosomal) or of a suppressor of mutability. However, one combination of a dominant crossover enhancer with a dominant mutator showed synergistic increases in both crossover and Minute frequencies, and the possibility exists that a single extrachromosomally transmitted element suppresses both male crossing over and mutability. This suppressor element (or elements) had been previously diagnosed in the pc stock which, in this study, was discovered to have also a dominant enhancer of male crossing over and a dominant mutator occupying separable loci in the third chromosome. The pc enhancer of male crossing over differs from the dominant enhancer in another stock with respect to the regional distribution of crossovers, and the pc mutator is distinguished from another 3-linked mutator by its preferential induction of mutations at the Delta locus.