LINKAGE (but not sex linkage)

INTRODUCTION AND HYPOTHESES

Consider two fruit fly traits: body color (b) and wing shape (vg). b+ (gray) is dominant to b (black) and vg+
(long) is dominant to vg (vestigial).

You cross a pure-breeding gray, long winged female to a pure-breeding black, vestigial winged male.
What are the genotypes of the F1 offspring? Phenotypes?

You are investigating two hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: The body color and wing shape genes are on different chromosomes and recombine via
independent assortment.
Hypothesis 2: The body color and wing shape genes are near each other on the same chromosome and
recombine only by crossing over.

Like a good scientist, you make some predictions for each of your alternative hypotheses.

PREDICTIONS ABOUT GAMETES

Hypothesis 1:
If hypothesis 1 is true, what sort of gametes (with respect to body color and wing shape alleles) would
you predict an F1 fly to make? Draw them here. Include chromosomes in your drawing and label where
you would find each allele.

What ratio of the these gametes would you expect to observe?

Hypothesis 2:
If hypothesis 2 is true, what sort of gametes (with respect to body color and wing shape alleles) would
you predict an F1 fly to make? Draw them here. Assume no crossing over happens. These are called
non-recombinant (or “parental”) gametes. Hint: you should look at the parental flies that formed the
F1 fly to get an idea of what the F1 chromosomes may look like.

What ratio of these gametes would you expect to observe?

What other gametes would be possible if crossing over happened? Draw them here. These are called
recombinant gametes.

Would you expect these gametes resulting from crossover events to be more, less or equally likely to be
produced as the gametes produced when no crossing over happened?
REFINING YOUR PREDICTIONS
You realized that predictions should be something you can actually see/observe. You have no way of looking
into your fruit flies gametes to see what combination of body color and wing shape alleles they carry. All you
can do is cross your F1 flies to some other kind of fly and see what offspring they produce. What genotype
should you cross your F1 flies with to best observe the alleles in your F1 flies gametes? Why?

You cross your F1 fly to fly described above, and the cross produces 2300 offspring.
Make a prediction about the frequency of offspring phenotypes you will see for hypothesis 1:

Make a prediction about the frequency of offspring phenotypes you will see for hypothesis 2:

RESULTS
This cross actually resulted in:
965 gray, long winged offspring
944 black, vestigial winged offspring
185 black, long winged offspring
206 gray, vestigial winged offspring

Which hypothesis was supported?

LINKAGE AND MAP DISTANCE

In a cross like you constructed here, if more than 50% of the offspring were formed from “non-recombinant”
gametes, this indicates that the two genes under consideration do not assort independently and are likely on the
same chromosome.

Does the data observed here support linkage?

Linked genes on the same chromosome cannot assort independently in metaphase I. How did the recombinant
gametes from the F1 fly arise? Why are they only a small percentage of the total?

Establish the map distance between the genes for body color and wing shape. What determines map distance?

Draw a chromosome map to show the distance between the genes for body color and wing shape.