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(a) Write the scientific name of the organism Thomas Hunt Morgan and his colleagues worked with for their experiments. Explain the correlation between linkage and recombination with respect to genes as studied by them.  

(b) How did Sturtevant explain gene mapping while working with Morgan? 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 

Answers (1)

 a) Thomas Hunt Morgan and his colleagues worked with for their experiments on  Drosophila melanogaster. Morgan carried out several dihybrid crosses in Drosophila to study genes that were sex-linked. Morgan hybridised yellow-bodied, white-eyed females to brown-bodied, red-eyed males and intercrossed their F1 progeny. He observed that the two genes did not segregate independently of each other and the Fratio deviated very significantly from the 9:3:3:1 ratio (expected when the two genes are independent). Morgan and his group knew that the genes were located on the X chromosome  and saw quickly that when the two genes in a dihybrid cross were situated on the same chromosome, the proportion of parental gene combinations were much higher than the nonparental type. Morgan attributed this due to the physical association or linkage of the two genes and coined the term linkage to describe this physical association of genes on a chromosome and the term recombination to describe the generation of non-parental gene combinations. Morgan and his group also found that even when genes were grouped on the same chromosome, some genes were very tightly linked (showed very low recombination) ( Cross A) while others were loosely linked (showed higher recombination) ( Cross B). For example he found that the genes white and yellow were very tightly linked and showed only 1.3 per cent recombination while white and miniature wing showed 37.2 per cent recombination. 
 

b) His student Alfred Sturtevant used the frequency of recombination between gene pairs on the same chromosome as a measure of the distance between genes and ‘mapped’ their position on the chromosome. 

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Priyanka Kumari

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