The use of retrotransposons as markers for mapping genes responsible for fitness differences between related Drosophila melanogaster strains.

Hitch-hiking of dispersed mobile elements serving as molecular markers was used as a new tool for mapping quantitative trait loci in Drosophila melanogaster. Two Drosophila strains with high fitness (HA) were backcrossed repeatedly to a closely related strain with low fitness (LA) to initiate experimental populations with expected HA gene frequencies of 1/32. The frequencies of 19 insertion sites of the retrotransposons mdg1 and copia were analyzed after 11 to 17 generations. Frequencies of sites from the HA line increased substantially in the pericentromeric region, indicating that one or more loci responsible for the fitness difference between the strains were located there. A maximum likelihood (ML) procedure was applied to estimate selection coefficients associated with the markers, and this indicated a broad, strongly selected region of the chromosome. At least one additional locus was localized in the middle of the 2L arm. Possible applications of this method are discussed.