History of Balancer Chromosomes
Balancer Chromosomes were used as far back as 1975 in the paper Analysis of Chromosome 4 in Drosophila Melanogaster11: Ethyl Methanesulfonate Induced Lethals. Random mutations are caused by feeding the larva ethyl methane sulphonate. When a phenotype of interest is observed, the line is crossed with another line containing balancer chromosomes to maintain their lineage. In one instance they were used to genetically screen a population of Caenorhabditis elegans. At this point in time scientists had already realized the benefits of being able to genetically screen populations of organisms for genetic study. Equally as important, they also realized that they could limit crossing over in these populations as well give them a very consistent genetic population.
The use of balancer chromosomes has evolved into a well known and widely used method for genetic screening of model organisms. They are even being used to investigate the role of heterochromatin packing and the effect it has on genes as well as studies on the effect telomeres have on gene silencing.
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