AN IRREVERSIBLE GENE-INDUCED PLASTID MUTATION

Abstract

When plants of a variegated barley are self-pollinated, they produce few variegated and many albino offspring. In different years the proportion of albino plants has ranged from 80.2 to 93.1% of the total population. Seed from heads having much green tissue gave rise to a much larger proportion of variegated plants than did seed from heads with more white tissue. Maternal inheritance of plastids is probably the cause of this difference. In crosses F₁ plants are green, variegated, or albino if the ♂ parent is variegated, but if the ♂ parent is green all the progeny are green. The albino plastids thus apparently do not mutate back to normal in the presence of the normal gene. In some F₂ populations deviation from a ratio of 3 green: 1 others is insignificant, in other populations significant deviations, attributed to irregularities of plastid mutation and segregation, occur. F₃ results support the hypothesis that a single pair of genes affecting plastids is segregating in hybrids. The normal (green) gene is dominant if "green" proplastids are present in the egg but not dominant if the proplastids are all "white". From cytological observations on sperms and eggs as well as from the genetic results, it is considered likely that direct plastid transmission to zygotes is exclusively from the female parent.