Variation in natural populations of Drosophila as revealed by four-cutter analysis

Abstract

Four-cutter restriction enzyme analysis, a recently developed electroblotting technique, enables the survey of restriction site and insertion–deletion polymorphism in natural populations at a fine level of resolution. Using this technique, the distribution of polymorphism among geographically isolated populations of Drosophila melanogaster and in different structural–functional domains of the genome has been studied. A summary of these results is presented and discussed. Recent investigations of molecular variation within and between different chromosome arrangements in Drosophila are presented. Levels of variation in different regions of the X chromosome of D. melanogaster are also discussed.Key words: populations, DNA polymorphisms, Drosophila, restriction enzymes.