The alcohol dehydrogenase polymorphism in natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster: ADH activity variation restriction site polymorphism and the Adh cline

Abstract

Alcohol dehydrogenase activity has been measured in 186 iso-second chromosome lines -104 from seven Australian populations and 82 from six Chinese populations. Restriction endonuclease variation in the Adh gene region in these lines has previously been described (Jiang & Gibson, 1991). The mean ADH activity of AdhF and Adhs lines was significantly higher in the Chinese samples than in the Australian samples. In each population on both continents the mean activity of the AdhF lines is significantly higher than that of the Adhs lines. Six lines homozygous for a thermostability variant, AdhF (detected in four of the Chinese populations), had intermediate levels of ADH activity and protein amount. In a subset of the lines with the highest and lowest levels of ADH, there was a correlation of 0.69 between ADH activity and ADH CRM. None of the restriction site variants was consistently associated with the amount of ADH activity. Associations between BamHI (-7.2), the Adh polymorphism and ADH activity suggest that there are modifiers of ADH 5' to the gene. The deletion (0.2) at position -2.8 on the restriction map (Jiang & Gibson, 1991) was associated with increased levels of ADH, activity in Adhs lines from China. Two unique insertions in the gene region were associated with low activity in AdhF lines and a null activity allele had a deletion removing most of exon 2. A single line with a duplication of a part of the Adh coding region and of the 5' regulatory section had relatively high ADH activity. Considering all the data, the main factor affecting ADH activity levels in populations is the frequency of AdhF.

Evolutionary genetics of the Drosophila alcohol dehydrogenase gene-enzyme system

“…Such a hypothesis would be 15 consistent with the persistence of low frequencies of (leaky) Adh-null alleles in populations and in the recent spread of the ADH-FChD allozyme (Jiang, Gibson & Chen, 1989;Jiang & Gibson, 1992). Novel allozymes with lower larval ADH activity will exhibit higher flux control coefficients compared to ADH-FF.…”

Genetic consequences of an invasion through a patchy environment — the cynipid gallwasp Andricus quercuscalicis (Hymenoptera: Cynipidae)

“…In addition, selection has been demonstrated to act on a number of allozyme loci in herbivorous insects (Slatkin 1987;Watt et al 1985;Jiang & Gibson 1992;Rank 1992), and selection along climatic gradients has been suggested as the cause of geographical patterns of allozyme variation in the gallwasps D. rosae and D. mayri in northern Europe (Stille 1985a,b). Heritable intrapopulation variability in dispersal ability may also be important (Florence et al 1982;Dingle 1985;Gu & Danthanarayana 1992).…”

Comparative population structuring of molecular and allozyme variation ofDrosophila melanogaster Adhbetween Europe, West Africa and East Africa

“…The higher activity of this allele is due to a single amino acid change in the coding region and to two insertion/ deletions, V t and V 2 , in the adult first intron (Laurie et al 1991;Matthews et al 1992). Polymorphic modifiers are also present 5' to the transcription unit (Jiang & Gibson, 19926). The organization of the Adh locus is now characterized for a large part of the sequence in and around the coding region (Benyajati et al 1983), and it has become a thoroughly studied gene-enzyme system (review in Chambers, 1988).…”