Calvin Bridges, who worked in the lab of Morgan, made crosses to study the inheritance of X-linked

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Calvin Bridges, who worked in the lab of Morgan, made crosses to study the inheritance of X-linked traits in fruit flies. One of his experiments concerned two different X-linked genes affecting eye color and wing length. For the eye color gene, the red-eye allele (w+) is dominant to the white-eye allele (w). A second X-linked trait is wing length; the allele called miniature is recessive to the normal allele. In this case, m represents the miniature allele and m+ the normal allele, which is designated long wings. A male fly carrying a miniature allele on its single X chromosome has small (miniature) wings. A female must be homozygous, mm, in order to have miniature wings.Bridges made a cross between Xw,m+Xw,m+ female flies (white eyes and long wings) and Xw+,mY male flies (red eyes and miniature wings). He then examined the eyes, wings, and sexes of thousands of offspring. As expected, most of the offspring were females with red eyes and long wings or males with white eyes and long wings. On rare occasions (approximately 1 out of 1700 flies), however, he also obtained female offspring with white eyes or males with red eyes. He also noted the wing size in these flies and then cytologically examined their chromosome composition using a microscope. The following results were obtained:

Eye Wing Sex Offspring Color Length Chromosomes Expected females Red Long XX Expected males White Long XY Unexpected females (rare) White Long XXY Unexpected males (rare) Red Miniature X0 Source: Bridges, Calvin B., “Non-disjunction as Proof of the Chromosome Theory of Heredity,” Genetics, vol. 1, no. 2, March, 1916, 107–163.
Explain how the unexpected female and male offspring were produced.



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