One approach to examining the underlying genetic structure of the variation in a continuous phenotype is to measure a set of possibly mechanistically related traits and determine the quantitative genetic aspects of their transmission. In this study the quantities of stored triacylglycerol and glycogen were measured along with the activities of 10 enzymes in related metabolic pathways in a set of 1,157 half-sib families of Drosophila melanogaster. The families were structured with each male being mated to 10 females and two offspring were scored from each female. Parents and offspring were scored for the phenotypes, and the components of variance (additive, dominance, and environmental) were estimated in three ways, including analysis of variance on offspring alone, parent-offspring regression, and maximum likelihood methods. While there were differences among the estimates made by the three methods, a consistent result was that substantial additive genetic variation was detected for all the traits. Consistent with models for the quantitative genetics of enzyme kinetics, the genetic variances of global properties were largely additive. Previous studies with extracted chromosome lines had indicated several significant genetic correlations among these characters, and much of the correlation was attributable to additive effects. The results imply that there is substantial opportunity for natural or artificial selection to act on quantities of stored lipid and carbohydrate, and that the response to selection is likely to be in part mediated by changes in the kinetics of the enzymes targeted in this study.
© 1990 The Society for the Study of Evolution.