Question

1. WHICH OF YOUR genotypes were you able to better determine after consideration of phenotypes of your parent and siblings?

2. WHY DON’T RECESSIVE traits always eventually disappear from populations?

3. WHAT FRACTION OF recessive alleles are “hidden” in heterozygotes for each of the eight single-gene traits that you studied?

4. HOW MANY GENERATIONS would it take to eliminate at least 95% of the alleles for the recessive gene for the inability to taste PTC is a tyrant eliminated those who could not taste PTC from every generation before they could pass on their recessive alleles?

5. WHY MIGHT YOU expect the locus that governs lactose tolerance/intolerance to not be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?

6. WHAT MAY HAVE led to errors in your determining you total ridge count and how confident are you in the reliability of the heritability for this trait that you calculated?

7. IQ IS ANOTHER characteristic that is apparently heavily influenced by both genes and environment. What other human characteristics are likely to fall into this class?

Answer 1

Ans 1) The genotypes that one is able to determine after considering the phenotypes of parents and sibling is the dominant one. The dominant one is that genotype which is phenotypically expressed in your parents and siblings.

Ans 2) The recessive trait do not disappear due to hybrid protection. The hetereozygous organism tends to show the dominant trait but however it protects the recessive one. This makes it difficult to determine if an organism is homozygous or heterozygous. The recessive trait never complete disappear as they are silently passed from one generation to other.

Ans 3) For all the eight single genes trait in consideration, there is ½ of the fraction of recessive allele that is hidden. The ½ fraction is hidden based on the basis of the uncertainty.

Ans 4) As one is trying to eliminate the recessive genes, it might be building even more problem. It might take more than 10 generations or beyond to possibly remove 95% of the recessive genes from the population.

Ans 5) The lactose tolerance/intolerance is something that is difficult to locate at top of the Hardy-Weinberg principle as it is sort of medical myth. Lactase is an enzyme that plays a major role and many individual do not have sufficient amount of it making them lactose intolerant.