title: Genotoxicity testing with the somatic white-ivory system in the eye of Drosophila melanogaster.
abstract: The white-ivory test in Drosophila melanogaster is designed to detect chemically induced reversions of the sex-linked, recessive unstable eye-color mutation white-ivory to the wild-type form. After exposure of larvae reversions are detectable as clones of red facets in the eye of newly enclosed adult flies. Tester strains containing a quadruplication of the white-ivory gene on the X-chromosome(s) were used. In a strain with males carrying 4 copies of the gene and females carrying 8 copies of the gene, spontaneous reversions occurred proportional to the gene copy number. In contrast to this, chemically induced reversions occurred only 1.36 times more frequently in females (carrying 8 copies of the gene) than in males (carrying 4 copies). Since chemicals inducing different lesions in DNA (bleomycin, cyclophosphamide, daunomycin, diethyl sulfate and 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene) did induce statistically significant frequencies of reversions the test appears to be capable of detecting a wide variety of genotoxic chemicals with different modes of action. The recombinogen strychnine did not induce reversions.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Toxicology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich.
authors.forename: F E
authors.initials: FE
authors.lastname: Würgler
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kägi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D009152:Mutagenicity Tests; D009153:Mutagens; D009154:Mutation
chemical_list: D009153:Mutagens