Answer to Question #166060 in Genetics for Kristiina Hyttinen

Question

You sample a large population of wild pea plants, and after counting 5000 individuals you find that 12% of them have white flowers (remember Mendel’s experiments, white is recessive to purple, single locus, 2 alleles). A) What are the frequencies of p (recessive allele) and P (dominant allele), assuming Hardy-Weinberg? B) Assuming 1 generation per year, and no selection, no migration, and random crossing between individuals (bees don’t care what color the flowers are), what will be the gene frequency in 3 years?

Answer 1

White-colored flowers are a recessive trait. The fact that the recessive trait reappeared in the f₂ generation meant that the traits remained separate (not blended) in the plants of the f₁ generation. Mendel also proposed that plants possessed two copies of the trait for the flower-color characteristic, and that each parent transmitted one of its two copies to its offspring, where they came together. Moreover, the physical observation of a dominant trait could mean that the genetic composition of the organism included two dominant versions of the characteristic or that it included one dominant and one recessive version. Conversely, the observation of a recessive trait meant that the organism lacked any dominant versions of this characteristic. A large population of wild pea plants, and after counting 5000 individuals you find that 12% of them have white flowers. Mendel's law states that experiments, white is recessive to purple, single locus, 2 alleles.