This study shows that peroxisomes are abundant in the Malpighian tubule and gut of wild-type Oregon R Drosophila melanogaster and that the peroxisomal population of the rosy-506 eye-color mutant differs from that of the wild type. Catalase activity in wild-type flies is demonstrable in bodies of appearance and centrifugal behavior comparable to the perixosomes of vertebrate tissues. Xanthine oxidase (xanthine:oxygen oxidoreductase, EC 1. Deficits in one or more of the peroxisomal enzymes and possible defects in peroxisomal structure are correlated with certain human inherited metabolic diseases (1-4). These diseases are still poorly understood, in part because different tissues show different effects of the mutation and in part because alterations in single genes can seemingly have multiple effects on the peroxisomes. Studies of the disorders are made difficult by their rareness and by the obvious limits of working with human material. It would be helpful to study analogues of the disorders in animals amenable to detailed analysis, but thus far such analogues have not been available. We chose to initiate our explorations for peroxisomal mutants in Drosophila by comparing wild-type Oregon R strain flies with the rosy-506 eye-color mutant, in which 90% of the structural gene for xanthine dehydrogenase (xanthine: NAD+ oxidoreductase, EC 1.1.1.204) is deleted (5, 6). This protein is a bifunctional oxidoreductase that can act as a dehydrogenase or as an oxidase (xanthine:oxygen oxidoreductase, EC 1.1.3.22) depending upon substrate and acceptor availability (7,8). The oxidase activity of the enzyme is critical to the degradation of purines in many organisms; the dehydrogenase function is central to the formation of pterinebased eye-color pigments in Drosophila. We suspected that this protein might be peroxisomal because (i) when acting as an oxidase, it produces hydrogen peroxide, a common feature of peroxisomal oxidases; (ii) it requires flavin in generating peroxide, as is found for many other peroxisomal oxidases; and (iii) its role in punine degradation is potentially functionally linked to activity of allantoicase and uricase, known peroxisomal enzymes (9). The subcellular localization of xanthine oxidase is not clearly established. Some cell fractionation studies show most of the enzyme to be soluble (9, 10), while other investigations report some xanthine oxidase cosedimenting with peroxisomal enzymes (11, 12).The study reported here identifies peroxisomes in the Malpighian tubule and gut of adult Drosophila wild-type Oregon R and rosy-506 strains, by virtue of their content of catalase, the peroxisomal "marker" enzyme. To localize xanthine oxidase, we have adapted cytochemical methods used to demonstrate other oxidases. With these methods, we have shown the presence of xanthine oxidase in peroxisomes of wild-type flies and the absence of this enzyme in rosy-506 flies. We also find signs that, as in the human mutations, a relatively simple genetic change can have complex effects on the peroxisomes. Prel...