The behavior of four neurological mutants of Drosophila.

INGLE gene changes offer an efficient and attractive way to study the genetic control of behavior. Drosophila, with its numerous technical advantages, would seem to provide a fruitful approach in working out the complexities of neurological control. The four neurological mutants discovered serendipitously and described in this report present just such an opportunity. The phenotype common to all four is a rapid shaking of the legs following etherization. Because the mutants appeared, among the progeny of four different males of the original thirty treated, they represent four independent mutational events. Subsequent study has disclosed that three separate gene loci are involved, all on the X-chromosome. This shaking phenotype has been described previously in D. melanogaster by CATSCH (1944) who localized the dominant gene at 58 on the X-chromosome and named the mutant, Shaker, because of its resemblance to the sex-linked dominant in D. funebris (LUERS 1936). Since then three other occurrences of the Shaker phenotype in D. melanogaster have been reported, ( NOVITSKI 1949; FAHMY and FAHMY 1959) all produced by a gene change at the original Shaker locus. To our knowledge, however, these stocks no longer exist nor were the studies carried beyond the description of the phenotype and the localization of the gene.