Population Genetics Problems 1. In a population that is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the frequency of the allele a is 0.3.

What is the percentage of the population that is homozygous for this allele? 2. In the foregoing population, what is the percentage of the population that is heterozygous for this locus? 3. In a population with two alleles, A and a, the frequency of a is 0.6. What would be the frequency of heterozygotes in the population if it is in H-W equilibrium? 4. You sample a population of butterflies and find that 42% are heterozygotes at a given locus. What would be the frequency of the recessive allele in this population? 5. A large population of lab animals has been allowed to breed randomly for a number of generations. After several generations, 64% of the animals display a recessive trait, the same percentage as at the beginning of the breeding program. The rest of the animals show the dominant phenotype, with heterozygotes indistinguishable from homozygous dominants. A) What is the frequency of the recessive allele in the gene pool? B) What proportion of the population would you expect to be hetereozygous for the trait? 6. In 2468, two male space colonists and three female space colonists settle on an uninhabited Earth-like planet in the Andromeda galaxy. The colonists and their offspring randomly mate for many generations. All five of the original colonists had free ear lobes, and two are heterozygous. The allele for free ear lobes is dominant to the allele for attached ear lobes. A) If one assumes the H-W equilibrium applies to this planet, about how many people will have attached ear lobes when the planets population reaches 10,000? B) The original population was not in equilibrium. How many generations of random mating will it take for this population to reach equilibrium? 7. Red-green colorblindness is a sex-linked recessive condition that occurs in about 8 of 100 males of the Caucasian ethnic group. What proportion of the females of the same ethnic group would you predict to be carriers for this trait?

Answers: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 9% (0.09) 42% (0.42) 0.48 You can not say, more information is needed to determine this value A) 0.80 B) 0.32 A) 400 B) 1 0.1472