Chloramphenicol is an antibiotic used to treat several bacterial infections. However, it causes severe side effects like bone marrow suppression. Some mice show resistance to this antibiotic side effect. The following is a study done in mice in which researchers tried to determine the mode of inheritance of this trait. Read an extract of their results and conclude which effect is happening:
The isolation and characterization of CAP-resistant cells resulting from the fusion between enucleated (without nucleus) CAP-resistant mouse cells and nucleated, CAP-sensitive (not resistant) mouse cells has been described. These fusion products, cybrids, appear at high frequency and are stable with respect to CAP resistance. They resemble the nucleated parent cell in terms of chromosome complement and nuclear markers and the enucleated parent cell in terms of CAP resistance. Furthermore, control fusions between enucleated and nucleated CAP-sensitive cells produce no CAP-resistant cells. Fusions between nucleated, CAP-resistant and CAP-sensitive cells under the same selective conditions produced CAP-resistant hybrids at a frequency 100 times lower than the rate of appearance of CAP-resistant cybrids.
Bunn; Douglas C. Wallace; M. Eisenstadt
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 1974, 71 (5) 1681-1685 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.71.5.1681
Maternal effects
Cytoplasmic inheritance
Epigenetic effects
Environmental effects