Suppression of ‘purple’ in Coprinus lagopus—an anomalous genetic situation

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Abstract
The spontaneous reversion to white of three purple mutants of Coprinus lagopus has been demonstrated to be due to suppression. Forty-one of the fifty suppressed purples isolated were crossed to wild-type and all crosses gave fewer than 25% purple progeny, i.e. all the suppressors appeared to be linked to the gene suppressed. Values for the percentage of purples segregated from these crosses varied continuously from 0% to nearly 20%. The functional relationships of the fifty suppressors were investigated by the technique of complementation in dicaryons. The pattern of results formally indicate two suppressor loci with extensive inter-allelic complementation at one of them. The functional allelism indicated by the complementation results is not compatible, in conventional terms, with the apparent positional spread of the suppressors. Several possible explanations are discussed but more data are required before a choice can be made between them. It seems most probable that the same genetic entity is involved in each independent event of suppression and that the characteristic segregations of purples from crosses of suppressed purples with wild-type will have to be explained in terms other than of normal recombination.

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