Five projects involving DNA-DNA hybridization are proposed; the organisms to be studied are several species of Drosophila. This first project is to measure overall heterozygosity using homozygous strains. The second is to study the relative rate of evolutionary change in nuclear DNA compared to mitochondrial DNA. The third project is to calibrate results from DNA-DNA hybridizations with respect to percent base pair mismatch. The the fourth project is to compare levels of genetic differentiation among sibling species of several groups. The final proposed project is to develop the technique of DNA-DNA hybridization to study the relative rates of evolution of a variety of functional classes of DNA. While all the proposed work concerns Drosophila, if the methodology can be established for this one group it can be used on virtually any other organism.
