Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 Dec 11;139(6):1180-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2009.10.033.

Little effect of the tan locus on pigmentation in female hybrids between Drosophila santomea and D. melanogaster

Daniel R Matute  1 , Ian A Butler, Jerry A Coyne
Affiliations

Little effect of the tan locus on pigmentation in female hybrids between Drosophila santomea and D. melanogaster

Daniel R Matute et al. Cell. .

Abstract

Previous work on Drosophila santomea suggested that its absence of abdominal pigmentation, compared to the other darkly pigmented species, is based on mutations in the cis-regulatory region of tan, inactivating the expression of that gene in the abdomen of D. santomea males and females. Our discovery that D. santomea males can produce viable hybrids when mated to D. melanogaster females enables us to use the armamentarium of genetic tools in the latter species to study the genetic basis of this interspecific difference in pigmentation. Hybridization tests using D. melanogaster deficiencies that include tan show no evidence that this locus is involved in the lighter pigmentation of D. santomea females; rather, the pigmentation difference appears to involve at least four other loci in the region. Earlier results implicating tan may have been based on a type of transgenic analysis that can give misleading results about the genes involved in an evolutionary change.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Abdominal pigmentation of D. melanogaster, D. santomea and D. yakuba. A. ♀ D. melanogaster, B. ♀ D. santomea, C. ♀ D. yakuba, D. ♂ D. melanogaster, E. ♂ D. santomea and F. ♂ D. yakuba.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
D. melanogaster females heterozygous for tan mutants and the Basc balancer chromosome (mel tan/Basc) backcrossed to tan males. In all cases Basc/tan heterozygotes (A–F) homozygotes (G–L) can be clearly distinguished from tan/tan homozygotes in D. melanogaster.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Phenotypic distribution of the progeny produced by the (Df(1)t20A/Basc) x Df(1)t20A (A) and (Df(1)t20A/Basc) × san (B) crosses.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Interspecific complementation tests. D. melanogaster females heterozygous for tan mutants and the Basc balancer chromosome (mel tan/Basc) were crossed to males of four different species: D. mauritiana, D. simulans, D. melanogaster and D. santomea. Only the crosses involving Df(1)t20A/Basc females are shown but the results are the same with all the mutants studied. Top panels: F1 hybrid females carrying Basc. A.mau/Basc, B.sim/Basc, C.mel/Basc, D.san/Basc. Lower panels: F1 hybrid females carrying tan: E. mau/ Df(1)t20A, F. sim/ Df(1)t20A, G. mel/ Df(1)t20A, H. san/ Df(1)t20A.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Deficiency analysis of QTL affecting pigmentation between D. melanogaster and D. santomea. Only two of the sixteen tested deficiencies are shown. D. melanogaster (Df(1)BK10) when crossed to a D. santomea male produced two kinds of progeny (Basc/san (A) and Df(1)BK10/san (C)) that showed a significant difference in pigmentation. The progeny of the cross mel (Df(1)r-D17) × san (Basc/san (B) and Df(1)r-D17/san (D)) showed no significant differences in their pigmentation levels. Top panels: F1 hybrid females carrying Basc. A. Basc/san, B. Basc/san Lower panels: F1 hybrid females carrying a deficiency C. Df(1)BK10/san, D. Df(1)r-D17/san
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Carbone MA, Llopart A, deAngelis M, Coyne JA, Mackay TF. Quantitative trait loci affecting the difference in pigmentation between Drosophila yakuba and D. santomea. Genetics. 2005;171:211–225. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Carroll SB. Endless forms most beautiful : the new science of evo devo and the making of the animal kingdom. 1st edn. New York: W.W. Norton & Co; 2005a.
    1. Carroll SB. Evolution at two levels: on genes and form. PLoS biology. 2005b;3:e245. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Clark RM, Wagler TN, Quijada P, Doebley J. A distant upstream enhancer at the maize domestication gene tb1 has pleiotropic effects on plant and inflorescent architecture. Nat Genet. 2006;38:594–597. - PubMed
    1. Colosimo PF, Hosemann KE, Balabhadra S, Villareal G, Dickson M, Grimwood J, Schmutz J, Myers R, Schluter D, Kingsley DM. Widespread parallel evolution in sticklebacks by repeated fixation of ectodysplasin alleles. Science. 2005;307:1928–1933. - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources