heredity Linkage of traitsgenetics

As pointed out above, the random assortment of the maternal and paternal chromosomes at meiosis is the physical basis of the independent assortment of genes and of the traits they control. This is the basis of the second law of Mendel (see the section Mendelian genetics above). The number of the genes in a sex cell is, however, much greater than that of the chromosomes. When two or more genes are borne on the same chromosome, these genes may not be assorted independently; such genes are said to be linked. When a Drosophila fly homozygous for a normal gray body and long wings is crossed with one having a black body and vestigial wings, the F₁ consists of hybrid gray, long-winged flies (see the figure). Gray body (B) is evidently dominant over black body (b), and long wing (V) is dominant over vestigial wing (v). Now consider a backcross of the heterozygous F₁ males to double-recessive black-vestigial females (bbvv). Independent assortment would be expected to give in the progeny of the backcross the following: 1 gray-long : 1 gray-vestigial : 1 black-long : 1 black-vestigial. In reality, only gray-long and black-vestigial flies are produced, in approximately equal numbers; the genes remain linked in the same combinations in which they were found in the parents. The backcross of the heterozygous F₁ females to double-recessive males gives a somewhat different result: 42 percent each of gray-long and black-vestigial flies and about 8 percent each of black-long and gray-vestigial classes. In sum, 84 percent of the progeny have the parental combinations of traits, and 16 percent have the traits recombined. The interpretation of these results given in 1911 by the American geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan laid the foundation of the theory of linear arrangement of genes in the chromosomes.

Traits that exhibit linkage in experimental crosses (such as black body and vestigial wings) are determined by genes located in the same chromosome. As more and more genes became known in Drosophila, they fell neatly into four linkage groups corresponding to the four pairs of the chromosomes this species possesses. One linkage group consists of sex-linked genes, located in the X chromosome (see the section Sex linkage below); of the three remaining linkage groups, two have many more genes than the remaining one, which corresponds to the presence of two pairs of large chromosomes and one pair of tiny dotlike chromosomes. The numbers of linkage groups in other organisms are equal to or smaller than the numbers of the chromosomes in the sex cells—e.g., 10 linkage groups and 10 chromosomes in corn, 19 linkage groups and 20 chromosomes in the house mouse, and 23 linkage groups and 23 chromosomes in the human.

As seen above, the linkage of the genes black and vestigial in Drosophila is complete in heterozygous males, while in the progeny of females there appear about 17 percent of recombination classes. With very rare exceptions, the linkage of all genes belonging to the same linkage group is complete in Drosophila males, while in the females different pairs of genes exhibit all degrees of linkage from complete (no recombination) to 50 percent (random assortment). Morgan’s inference was that the degree of linkage depends on physical distance between the genes in the chromosome: the closer the genes, the tighter the linkage and vice versa. Furthermore, Morgan perceived that the chiasmata (crosses that occur in meiotic chromosomes) indicate the mechanism underlying the phenomena of linkage and crossing over. As shown schematically in the of chromosomes at meiosis, the maternal and paternal chromosomes (represented in blue and red) cross over and exchange segments, so a chromosome emerging from the process of meiosis may consist of some maternal (grandmaternal) and some paternal (grandpaternal) sections. If the probability of crossing over taking place is uniform along the length of a chromosome (which was later shown to be not quite true), then genes close together will be recombined less frequently than those far apart.

This realization opened an opportunity to map the arrangement of the genes and the estimated distances between them in the chromosome by studying the frequencies of recombination of various traits in the progenies of hybrids. In other words, the linkage maps of the chromosomes are really summaries of many statistical observations on the outcomes of hybridization experiments. In principle at least, such maps could be prepared even if the chromosomes, not to speak of the chiasmata at meiosis, were unknown. But an interesting and relevant fact is that in Drosophila males the linkage of the genes in the same chromosome is complete, and observations under the microscope show that no chiasmata are formed in the chromosomes at meiosis. In most organisms, including humans, chiasmata are seen in the meiotic chromosomes in both sexes, and observations on hybrid progenies show that recombination of linked genes occurs also in both sexes.

Chromosome maps exist for the Drosophila fly, corn, the house mouse, the bread mold Neurospora crassa, and some bacteria and bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria). Until quite late in the 20th century, the mapping of human chromosomes presented a particularly difficult problem: experimental crosses could not be arranged in humans, and only a few linkages could be determined by analysis of unique family histories. However, the development of recombinant DNA technology provided new understanding of human genetic processes and new methods of research. Using the techniques of recombinant DNA technology, hundreds of genes have been mapped to the human chromosomes and many linkages established.

The male of many animals has one chromosome pair, the sex chromosomes, consisting of unequal members called X and Y. At meiosis the X and Y chromosomes first pair then disjoin and pass to different cells. One-half of the gametes (spermatozoa) formed contain the X chromosome and the other half the Y. The female has two X chromosomes; all egg cells normally carry a single X. The eggs fertilized by X-bearing spermatozoa give females (XX), and those fertilized by Y-bearing spermatozoa give males (XY).

The genes located in the X chromosomes exhibit what is known as sex-linkage or crisscross inheritance. This is because of a crucial difference between the paired sex chromosomes and the other pairs of chromosomes (called autosomes). The members of the autosome pairs are truly homologous; that is, each member of a pair contains a full complement of the same genes (albeit, perhaps, in different allelic forms). The sex chromosomes, on the other hand, do not constitute a homologous pair, as the X chromosome is much larger and carries far more genes than does the Y. Consequently, many recessive alleles carried on the X chromosome of a male will be expressed just as if they were dominant, for the Y chromosome carries no genes to counteract them. The classic case of sex-linked inheritance, described by Morgan in 1910, is that of the white eyes in Drosophila. White-eyed females crossed to males with the normal red eye colour produce red-eyed daughters and white-eyed sons in the F₁ generation and equal numbers of white-eyed and red-eyed females and males in the F₂ generation. The cross of red-eyed females to white-eyed males gives a different result: both sexes are red-eyed in F₁ and the females in the F₂ generation are red-eyed, half the males are red-eyed, and the other half white-eyed. As interpreted by Morgan, the gene that determines the red or white eyes is borne on the X chromosome, and the allele for red eye is dominant over that for white eye. Since a male receives its single X chromosome from his mother, all sons of white-eyed females also have white eyes. A female inherits one X chromosome from her mother and the other X from her father. Red-eyed females may have genes for red eyes in both of their X chromosomes (homozygotes), or they may have one X with the gene for red and the other for white (heterozygotes). In the progeny of heterozygous females, one-half of the sons will receive the X chromosome with the gene for white and will have white eyes, and the other half will receive the X with the gene for red eyes. The daughters of the heterozygous females crossed with white-eyed males will have either two X chromosomes with the gene for white—and hence have white eyes—or one X with the gene for white and the other X with the gene for red and will be red-eyed heterozygotes.

In humans, red-green colour blindness and hemophilia are among many traits showing sex-linked inheritance and are consequently due to genes borne in the X chromosome.

In some animals—birds, butterflies and moths, some fish, and at least some amphibians and reptiles—the chromosomal mechanism of sex determination is a mirror image of that described above. The male has two X chromosomes and the female an X and Y chromosome. Here the spermatozoa all have an X chromosome; the eggs are of two kinds, some with X and others with Y chromosomes, usually in equal numbers. The sex of the offspring is then determined by the egg rather than by the spermatozoon. Sex-linked inheritance is altered correspondingly. A male homozygous for a sex-linked recessive trait crossed to a female with the dominant one gives, in the F₁ generation, daughters with the recessive trait and heterozygous sons with the corresponding dominant trait. The F₂ generation has recessive and dominant females and males in equal numbers. A male with a dominant trait crossed to a female with a recessive trait gives uniformly dominant F₁ and a segregation in a ratio of 2 dominant males : 1 dominant female : 1 recessive female.

Observations on pedigrees or experimental crosses show that certain traits exhibit sex-linked inheritance; the behaviour of the X chromosomes at meiosis is such that the genes they carry may be expected to exhibit sex-linkage. This evidence still failed to convince some skeptics that the genes for the sex-linked traits were in fact borne in certain chromosomes seen under the microscope. An experimental proof was furnished in 1916 by American geneticist Calvin Blackman Bridges. As stated above, white-eyed Drosophila females crossed to red-eyed males usually produce red-eyed female and white-eyed male progeny. Among thousands of such “regular” offspring, there are occasionally found exceptional white-eyed females and red-eyed males. Bridges constructed the following working hypothesis. Suppose that, during meiosis in the female, gametogenesis occasionally goes wrong, and the two X chromosomes fail to disjoin. Exceptional eggs will then be produced, carrying two X chromosomes and eggs carrying none. An egg with two X chromosomes coming from a white-eyed female fertilized by a spermatozoon with a Y chromosome will give an exceptional white-eyed female. An egg with no X chromosome fertilized by a spermatozoon with an X chromosome derived from a red-eyed father will yield an exceptional red-eyed male. This hypothesis can be rigorously tested. The exceptional white-eyed females should have not only the two X chromosomes but also a Y chromosome, which normal females do not have. The exceptional males should, on the other hand, lack a Y chromosome, which normal males do have. Both predictions were verified by examination under a microscope of the chromosomes of exceptional females and males. The hypothesis also predicts that exceptional eggs with two X chromosomes fertilized by X-bearing spermatozoa must give individuals with three X chromosomes; such individuals were later identified by Bridges as poorly viable “superfemales.” Exceptional eggs with no Xs, fertilized by Y-bearing spermatozoa, will give zygotes without X chromosomes; such zygotes die in early stages of development.