Nucleotide polymorphism in the 5' promoter region of esterase 6 in Drosophila melanogaster and its relationship to enzyme activity variation.

A 974-bp region immediately 5' of the esterase 6 gene was sequenced in 17 field derived third chromosome isoallelic lines. Twenty-three polymorphisms were identified, only two in the first 400 bp 5' but 16 in a 325-bp region from -494 to -819 bp. This distribution differs from previously published patterns in Drosophila simulans and D. mauritiana, where the first 800 bp are highly conserved. Fourteen common polymorphisms in the 325-bp region above are all in strong linkage disequilibrium with each other. Moreover, most of the haplotypes defined by the total of 23 polymorphisms fall into two groups that differ as a block at all 14 of these latter sites. Sequence differences between the two groups include some restriction sites that were scored in an earlier study of RFLPs and EST6 enzyme phenotypes among 42 isoallelic lines from the same population. By collating the two studies, we show that one haplotype group yields approximately 15% lower EST6 enzyme activity in adult males than the other. The promoter haplotypes show only weak disequilibrium with the esterase 6 fast/slow allozyme polymorphism, so it seems unlikely that previously reported latitudinal clines in the allozyme frequencies are due to their hitchhiking along with selection on the promoter difference.

Genetic and environmental effects on the expression of peptidases and larval viability in Drosophila melanogaster.

The peptidase system in Drosophila melanogaster, consisting of dipeptidase-A, dipeptidase-B, dipeptidase-C and the leucine aminopeptidases, was used as a model to study the adaptive significance of enzyme activity variation. The involvement of the peptidases in osmoregulation has been suggested from the ubiquitous distribution of peptidase activities in nearly all tissues and the high concentration of amino acids and oligopeptides in the hemolymph. Under this hypothesis, larvae counteract increases in environmental osmotic stress by hydrolyzing peptides into amino acids both intra- and extracellularly to increase physiological osmotic concentration. The expression of the peptidases was studied by assaying for peptidase activities in third instar larvae of isogenic lines, which were reared under increasing levels of environmental osmotic stress using either D-mannitol or NaCl. Second and third chromosome substitution isogenic lines were used to assess the relative contribution of regulatory and structural genes in enzyme activity variation. Results indicate that: (1) genetic variation exists for peptidase activities, (2) the effect of osmotic stress is highly variable among peptidases, (3) changes in peptidase activities in response to osmotic stress depend on both genetic background and osmotic effector and (4) peptidase activities are correlated with each other, but these phenotypic correlations depend on genetic background, osmotic effector, and level of osmotic stress. Osmotic concentration in the larval hemolymph is correlated with leucine aminopeptidase activity, but changes in hemolymph osmotic concentration in response to environmental osmotic stress depend on the osmotic effector in the environment. Although these findings suggest that genetic and environmental factors contribute significantly toward the expression of enzymes with similar functions, a relative larval viability study of genotypes that differed significantly in dipeptidase-B (DIP-B) activity revealed that low DIP-B activity did not confer any measurable reduction in larval viability under increasing levels of environmental osmotic stress. These negative results suggest that, either DIP-B does not play a major role in osmoregulation or differential osmoregulation is not related to egg to adult viability in these tests.

Associations between restriction site polymorphism and enzyme activity variation for esterase 6 in Drosophila melanogaster.

Thirty-five nucleotide polymorphisms were found in a 21.5-kbp region including the Est6 locus among 42 isoallelic lines extracted from a single natural population of Drosophila melanogaster. The heterozygosity per nucleotide pair was estimated to be 0.010 overall, but was lower in sequences hybridizing to transcripts than in those not hybridizing to transcripts. Eleven of 36 pairwise comparisons among the nine most common polymorphisms showed significant gametic disequilibrium. Four of these polymorphisms were also significantly associated with the major EST6-F/EST6-S allozyme polymorphism. Significant disequilibrium was generally restricted to polymorphisms less than 1-2 kbp apart. Previously reported measures of EST6 activity in virgin adult females proved not to be significantly associated with any of the six most common nucleotide polymorphisms located in the Est6 coding region or the 1.5 kbp immediately 5'. However, the 11 haplotypes for five of these polymorphisms that lie in the 1.5-kbp 5' region could explain about half of the previously reported variation among the lines for both EST6 activity and the amount of EST6 protein in virgin adult males. One particular polymorphism, for a RsaI site 530 bp 5' of the initiation codon, could explain 21% of the male activity variation among lines. This site is embedded in a large palindrome and we suggest that sequences including or close to this site may be involved in the regulation of EST6 synthesis in the ejaculatory duct of the adult male.

Models of quantitative variation of flux in metabolic pathways.

As a model of variation in a quantitative character, enzyme activity variation segregating in a population is assumed to affect the flux in simple metabolic pathways. The genetic variation of flux is partitioned into additive and nonadditive components. An interaction component of flux variance is present because the effect of an allelic substitution is modified by other substitutions which change the concentrations of shared metabolites. In a haploid population, the the proportion of interaction variance is a function of the gene frequencies at the loci contributing to the flux variation, enzyme activities of mutant and wild type at variable loci and activities at nonvariable loci. The proportion of interaction variance is inversely related to the ratio of mutant to wild-type activities at the loci controlling the enzyme activities. The interaction component as a function of gene frequencies is at a maximum with high mutant allele frequencies. In contrast, the dominance component which would apply to a diploid population is maximal as a proportion of the total when mutant alleles are at low frequencies. Unless there are many loci with large differences in activity between the alleles, the interaction component is a small proportion of the total variance. Data on enzyme activity variation from natural and artificial populations suggest that such variation generates little nonadditive variance despite the highly interactive nature of the underlying biochemical system.

NATURALLY OCCURRING ENZYME ACTIVITY VARIATION IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER. I. SOURCES OF VARIATION FOR 23 ENZYMES

ABSTRACT The genetic component of variation of enzyme activity levels in Drosophila melanogaster was investigated by using 48 second- and 48 third-chromosome isogenic substitution lines derived from natural populations. The results confirm those of our earlier experiments with the same lines and extend them to a number of additional enzymes. All 23 enzymes show a significant genetic component to the variation in one or both sets of lines and only a small part of this variation is accounted for by variation among the lines in the amount of tissue per fly. The magnitude of line effects is, in most cases, considerably larger than the magnitude of environmental and measurement error effects, and the line effects are approximately continuous in distribution. Variation in the geographic origin and karyotype of the chromosomes generally does not contribute to the line component of variation, but allozymes provide an important source of variation for a few of the enzymes. Many of the enzymes show evidence for variation of activity modifiers that are not linked to the structural locus of the enzyme.