In seven experiments the segregation ratio in barley plants heterozygous for the waxy-gene was studied. Each experiment entailed the scoring of more than 40000 iodine-stained pollen grains from ten spikes. A significant over-representation of blue pollen grains was found in all experiments, with the segregation distortion (measured as a conversion force) ranging from 0·0063 to 0·0143. The distortion was unaffected by which of two mutations was used and which genetic background the plants had, but was stronger in 1988 than in 1987. Different statistical, methodological and biological explanations of the results are discussed.

The frequency, distribution and structure of P elements on the second and third chromosomes of Texas 1, a wild-type inbred strain of Drosophila melanogaster, were investigated by in situ hybridization. These autosomes were isolated individually and used as P-element donors to study the frequency and distribution of male recombination events generated on recipient chromosomes which were originally devoid of P sequences. The P-element array of chromosome 2 was shown to generate higher male recombination frequencies on chromosome 3 than vice versa, despite having fewer P factors and fewer P elements in general. This is likely to be due to the presence and distribution of specific P-deletion derivatives, which vary in their ability to repress P mobility. The male recombination generated on recipient chromosomes is associated with the insertion of donated P sequences, but only in a small minority of cases could a novel P-element site be detected at, or near, the recombination breakpoint. The majority of such breakpoints appear to be associated either with unsuccessful P insertion, or with the action of P transposase attracted by P elements newly inserted elsewhere on the recipient chromosome. Recent evidence also suggests that a small proportion of the breakpoints may be associated with the action of P transposase alone. Male recombination breakpoints appear to be distributed effectively at random along the recipient autosomes, and their frequency of occurrence was shown to correlate with the physical length of DNA available between markers, as revealed by the polytene map distance.

The Sxr (sex-reversed) region that carries a copy of the mouse Y chromosomal testis-determining gene can be attached to the distal end of either the Y or the X chromosome. During male meiosis, Sxr recombined freely between the X and Y chromosomes, with an estimated recombination frequency not significantly different from 50% in either direction. During female meiosis, Sxr recombined freely between the X chromosome to which it was attached and an X-autosome translocation. A male mouse carrying the original Sxra region on its Y chromosome, and the shorter Sxrb variant on the X, also showed 50% recombination between the sex chromosomes. Evidence of unequal crossing-over between the two Sxr regions was obtained: using five markers deleted from Sxrb, 3 variant Sxr regions were detected in 159 progeny (1·9%). Four other variants (one from the original cross and three from later generations) were presumed to have been derived from illegitimate pairing and crossing-over between Sxrb and the homologous region on the short arm of the Y chromosome. The generation of new variants throws light on the arrangement of gene loci and other markers within the short arm of the mouse Y chromosome.

Some previous attempts to produce tetraploids experimentally have resulted in a proportion of treated embryos becoming 2n/4n mosaics at a frequency which may be as high as 20%, when using cytochalasin B as a fusigenic stimulus and cytogenetic techniques to identify putative tetraploid embryos. To investigate the possible occurrence of 4n/2n mosaicism, tetraploid embryos were produced by electrofusion, a process which allows adjacent blastomeres at the 2-cell stage to fuse following exposure to electric field pulses. Embryos used for electrofusion were hemizygous for a transgene consisting of approximately 1000 copies of the mouse β-globin gene. After in situ hybridization, one hybridization signal is expected per diploid genome. Tetraploid cells in 7·5-, 8·5-, 9·5- and 10·5-day-old conceptuses were distinguished from diploid cells by performing in situ hybridization on histological sections. The frequency of nuclei with two hybridization signals in the ‘hemizygous’ tetraploid embryos was compared to diploid embryos which were either hemizygous or homozygous for the β-globin transgene. Comparison of the frequency of nuclei with two hybridization signals between tissues of ‘hemizygous’ tetraploid conceptuses and homozygous diploid conceptuses showed no significant difference, which implies that the tissues in the tetraploid conceptuses were uniformly tetraploid. No evidence was found to suggest that electrofusion results in 2n/4n mosaicism.

The present study was carried out to examine the genetic mechanism responsible for reversions to fertile phenotype detected in cytoplasmic male-sterile plants of rice. The cms-bo cytoplasm of Chinsurah boro II gave rise to male-sterility in plants without a gametophytic restorer gene (Rf1). Taichung 65 (T65A) was known to be the maintainer which carries no restorer; however, Taichun 65 preserved in our laboratory (T65B) showed partial fertility (about 8% seed set) when crossed with the male-sterile plants. Unexpectedly, the seed fertility gradually increased with repeated selfings and almost fully fertile plants were obtained in the F6 generation. The cytoplasmic substitution lines revealed that reversions to fertile phenotype resulted from mutational events at the nuclear level. The genetic experiments indicated that the partial fertility observed in the F1 hybrid was controlled by a dominant gene, Ifr1, which was carried by T65B. The results obtained suggested that Ifr1 itself was associated with instability of fertility restoration in the presence of cms-bo cytoplasm since partially fertile plants carrying Ifr1 always showed a tendency for gradual increase in fertility in the later generations. The results are also discussed in relation to a rapid genetic change through intensified gametic selection combined with instability.

Expressions for the probability and average time of detection of a recessive visible gene in populations where there is partial selfing or partial full-sib mating are presented. A small increase in the proportion of inbred matings greatly reduces the average time until detection and increases the proportion detected. Unless the proportion of inbred matings or the population size is very small, the time and proportion detected are approximately independent of the population size.

We would like to use maximum likelihood to estimate parameters such as the effective population size Ne, or, if we do not know mutation rates, the product 4Neμof mutation rate per site and effective population size. To compute the likelihood for a sample of unrecombined nucleotide sequences taken from a random-mating population it is necessary to sum over all genealogies that could have led to the sequences, computing for each one the probability that it would have yielded the sequences, and weighting each one by its prior probability. The genealogies vary in tree topology and in branch lengths. Although the likelihood and the prior are straightforward to compute, the summation over all genealogies seems at first sight hopelessly difficult. This paper reports that it is possible to carry out a Monte Carlo integration to evaluate the likelihoods pproximately. The method uses bootstrap sampling of sites to create data sets for each of which a maximum likelihood tree is estimated. The resulting trees are assumed to be sampled from a distribution whose height is proportional to the likelihood surface for the full data. That it will be so is dependent on a theorem which is not proven, but seems likely to be true if the sequences are not short. One can use the resulting estimated likelihood curve to make a maximum likelihood estimate of the parameter of interest, Ne or of 4Neμ. The method requires at least 100 times the computational effort required for estimation of a phylogeny by maximum likelihood, but is practical on today's work stations. The method does not at present have any way of dealing with recombination.

Consider a random sample of genes at a locus, drawn from a population evolving according to the infinitely many, neutral, alleles model. The sample will have a most recent common ancestor gene, which we shall call ‘Eve’. The probability distribution, for the number of genes of oldest allelic type in a sample, is known and has a neat form. Rather less is known about the distribution for the number of genes in the sample which are of the same allelic type as Eve possessed. If the latter number is positive, then these genes are automatically of the oldest type in the sample. But Eve may have no non-mutant descendants in the sample; then, the oldest allele will be a mutant arising in a line of descent after Eve. The paper studies the number of non-mutant descendants from Eve, its distribution and moments. It seems that there may be few neat results. In large samples, the proportion of genes of Eve's type has an approximate β-like density, together with a discrete probability atom at zero, if the mutation rate parameter is low. Extinction of the allele of even the population's common ancestor is possible, but not certain, and bounds are obtained for its probability. Some comments are made about the applications and implications of the results for human mitochondrial DNA.