EYES ON ABDOMENS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 111, 6 November 1935, Page 22

EYES ON ABDOMENS

WORK ON FRUIT FLY

Work has been done abroad in decapitating insects and transferring the heads of males to the bodies of females. It is a pretty mix-up, males and females (at least their heads) behaving strangely, says the "New York Times."

Difficult and delicate es this surgical operation' and transplantation must have been, Boris Ephrussi and G. W. Beadle have outdone it. At its recent Woods Hole meeting the Genetics Society of America learned of an extraordinary operation performed by the two on the eye of our old friend drosophila, the fruit fly. What they did was to graft an extra eye on the abdomen.

The fruit fly is not much bigger than a flea. Its eye is of microscopic dimensions. Yet the two entomological surgeons transplanted eyes while the insects were still in the grub stage. The specimens grew up with both normal and abdominal eyes.

What is the object of this? To find out more about the workings of heredity. The eyes were not indiscriminately planted. Flies with brown eyes were given red eyes, and flies with red eyes acquired brown ones. It turned out that brown eyes (the wild type) were unaffected by grafting. On the other hand, vermilion eyes assumed the wild, brown aspect. Genetists explain this on the theory that vermilion is a recessive colour and easily masked by the dominant brown.