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Nutritional requirements of inbred lines and crosses of Drosophila melanogaster

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2009

James H. Sang
James H. Sang
Affiliation:
Agricultural Research Council Poultry Research Centre, Edinburgh, 9
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1. The problem of whether or not hybrids are more efficient, less variable and have less stringent nutritional needs than their parents is examined by finding the dose-responses of four inbred Drosophila lines and their crosses to casein, choline, RNA, riboflavine, nicotinic acid, pyridoxine and folic acid, under germ-free conditions.

2. Under more or less optimal conditions, survival, development rate and weight of the hybrids are generally superior to those of the inbreds; the 4-way cross is not inferior to the 2-way crosses. Variability of the crosses is not necessarily lower than that of the inbreds, and the 4-way cross is no more variable than the 2-way crosses.

3. As measured by growth rate, the hybrids use casein more effectively than the pure lines, but their relative efficiency declines as the casein supply is decreased. There is a positive correlation between casein requirements for optimal growth and minimum requirements of pyridoxine. Hybrids also tend to be more efficient in their use of choline, but not of the other nutrients examined.

4. Deficiencies of particular nutrients (and also of excess provision of the non-vitamins) affect the lines and crosses differently, so that their relationships to one another are altered. The hybrids show no special advantage in resisting departures from the optimum. Variability is also changed significantly under sub-optimal conditions and, in some situations, the hybrids may then be more variable than the inbreds.

5. Each line and each cross is found to have its own optimal nutritional environment, and its particular reactions to departure from this. The full potential of the genotypes cannot be manifest, therefore, by tests in a single, standard environment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Genetics Research , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , February 1964 , pp. 50 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

References

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