Practice Questions

1. If 98 out of 200 individuals in a population express the recessive phenotype, what percent of the
population would be heterozygotes?
98/200=49
0.42 or 42% 2(0.7*0.3)=.42%

2. If 30% of a population is homozygous recessive for a given trait, what is the predicted frequency
of homozygous dominant?

.45 or
45%

3. In a population that is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the frequency of the homozygous

recessive genotype is 0.09. What is the frequency of individuals that are homozygous for the
dominant allele?

.49 or 49%

4. In humans, Rh-positive individuals have the Rh antigen on their red blood cells, while Rh-
negative individuals do not. If the Rh-positive phenotype is produced by a dominant gene (A),
and the Rh-negative phenotype is due to its recessive allele (a), what is the frequency of the Rh-
positive allele if 84% of a population is Rh-positive?

.6 or 60% 84/100
.84x100

5. Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder in homozygous recessives that causes death during the
teenage years. If 4 in 1,000 newborn babies have the disease, what is the expected frequency of
heterozygotes, assuming the population is at Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?

.11 or 11%

6. The allele y occurs with a frequency of 0.8 in a population of clams. What is the frequency of the
genotype yy?

.64 or 64%
7. A population of cats can be either black or white; the black allele (B) has
complete dominance over the white allele (b). Given a population of 1,000 cats--840 black and
160 white--determine the frequency of bb.

.16 or 16%

8. Of a certain population of pea plants, 9% are short (t). What are the frequencies of the recessive
allele (t) and the dominant allele (T)?

100/900
t=.3 or 30% q0.9%x200
T.7 or 70%

9. 4% of a pea plant population are short (t). What is the genotypic frequency of heterozygotes (Tt)
and homozygous dominant (TT)?

Tt=.32 or 32%
TT=.64 or 64%

10. Within a population of butterflies, the color brown (B) is dominant over the color white (b). If
40% butterflies are white, what is the allele frequency of the recessive allele (b)?

.64 or 63%