A highly unstable allele has been isolated at the white locus of Drosophila mauritiana, a sibling species of D. melanogaster . This allele, white-peach (wpch), mutates spontaneously in males and females to give both wild-type and bleached-white derivatives. The mutation frequency is about 10-3 mutations/generation. There is no evidence for clustering among mutant progeny, and phenotypically wpch flies with mosaic patches of wild-type tissue in the eyes are frequently recovered. Another X-linked locus, plum, is destabilized when wpch is on the same X chromosome.
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