Botran and bleomycin induce crossing-over, and bleomycin also increases aneuploidy in diploid strains of Aspergillus.

Both bleomycin, an antineoplastic drug, and botran (2,6-dichloro-4-nitro-aniline), a fungicide, are known to inhibit growth and induce genetic segregation in diploid tester strains of Aspergillus nidulans when present in agar media. To identify primary effects, samples of induced apparent crossover types were analysed in detail. For both compounds, coincident and consecutive events of mitotic crossing-over were found to be very frequent and such events showed a random distribution among isolated colour sectors. In the case of botran, a thorough search for imbalanced precursor types was negative and recessive lethals were found only rarely. Such segregants are therefore unlikely the result of terminal deletions. For bleomycin, induction of reciprocal crossing-over was confirmed by treatments of germinating conidia. On plating to normal growth medium, crossover segregants showed up as coloured half- or quarter-colonies, including some "twin spots". Whole coloured colonies were also frequent and these increased with dose levels which caused decreasing survival and increasing frequencies of abnormal colonies. Analysis of large fractions of such "abnormals" identified aneuploids in all cases. While botran, in plate tests, also increased haploid segregants and disomic precursors could be found, tests of germinating conidia "in liquid" were inconclusive, because botran is insoluble in water. Some increases of aneuploids were observed, but only when botran and the solvent DMSO both were present at increased levels.