Viability of Homozygous Deficiencies in Somatic Cells of DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER.
The viability of cells made homozygous for different deficiencies by induced mitotic recombination was examined. The deficiencies varied in length from two to 30 polytene chromosome bands and were distributed over the five major chromosome arms. Among a sample of 30, ten deficiencies were cell viable. Our results show that 12% of the genome is necessary for cell survival, supporting previous estimates of about 5,000 genes in the genome of Drosophila.
Ripoll
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Centro de Biología Molecular, CSIC, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid-34, Spain.
García-Bellido
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A