Hardy weinberg

Question

3.4. You are monitoring a large population of humans for the frequency of a recessive deleterious allele. The population size for every generation you monitor is greater than 100 million. When you start monitoring the allele frequency of the deleterious recessive (at the first generation) you see that it is at 15% (q=0.15). You monitor the population for 1000 generations and you find that at the end of the survey the recessive deleterious is now at 1% (q=0.01). Which of the following is the most likely explanation for your observations? a. Genetic drift was responsible for the near elimination of the recessive allele b. The recessive allele mutated back to the dominant allele in most individuals c. The population was inbreeding d. The population was in Hardy Weinberg equilibrium e. Natural selection was responsible for the near elimination of the recessive allel

Answer 1

Answer e is most likely. Hardy Weinberg equilibrium depends on the assumption that matings are random, unrelated to the genotype of the individuals. In such a case, the population will attain equilibrium in the first generation and then continue to maintain it. If one of the genotypes becomes less frequent over time, the chances are that people with this genotype do not make it to reproductive age, or not as often, or that society is biased with people showing social preferences for marrying partners with certain other phenotypes.