Inheritance of Ag-stainability of the nucleolus organizer regions in domestic sheep, Ovis aries

Abstract

One of the nucleolus organizer regions of sheep is located on chromosome 25, which forms one arm of a Robertsonian translocation chromosome (t₃). By mating sheep heterozygous and homozygous for the t₃ chromosome, and with various Ag-staining frequencies and deposit sizes, the heritability of the Ag-stainability could be determined. The inheritance of Ag-stainability was studied in 54 sheep in five pedigree groups. It was shown that the Ag-staining of a NOR is a heritable property. Matings of animals heterozygous for Ag-stainability provided an estimate of recombination frequency of the short arm of t₃.