Abstract
THE homoeotic mutants of Drosophila are of special interest in developmental biology because they cause the substitution of one body segment by another in the adult. The antennae of tumorous head (tuh) flies are replaced by mesothoracic leg tissue and part of the head by genital structures1,2 (Fig. 1). Homoeotic mutants are thought to be the result of mutations in regulatory genes3 which cause a suppression of the activity of one set of genes and the activation of an alternative set to bring about such a specific, well-defined transformation. These mutations somehow cause a group of cells at some stage in the life cycle to change their developmental pathway and differentiate during metamorphosis into different structures from those which they would normally form. We have analysed the tumorous head mutant and report here that it is probably the consequence of a gene acting at the time of determination.
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BOURNIAS-VARDIABASIS, N., BOWNES, M. Tumorous head is a maternal-effect homoeotic mutant of Drosophila melanogaster. Nature 276, 611–612 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1038/276611a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/276611a0
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