Speculations on the subject of alcohol dehydrogenase and its properties in Drosophila and other flies

✍ Scribed by Michael Ashburner

• Book ID: 101304761
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 95 KB
• Volume: 20
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0265-9247
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1521-1878(199811)20:11<949::aid-bies10>3.0.co;2-0

✦ Synopsis

The alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH) and their genes (Adh) of Drosophila have been much studied by population and evolutionary biologists. I attempt to put some of these studies into a broad adaptionist perspective, suggesting the co-evolution of this enzyme with the fleshy fruits of angiosperms and fermenting yeasts. I suggest that these events occurred at about the K/T boundary (65 million years ago) and that the typical Drosophila (as exemplified by D. melanogaster) evolved from flies unable to use fermenting substrates as breeding sites. I also hint that the ADH enzymes of other flies (e.g., the tephritid fruit flies) may have evolved independently of those of Drosophila, but from a common ancestral gene. BioEs-