POPULATION GENETICS

Study of the CHANGES IN ALLELE FREQUENCIES & factors affecting them

POPULATION GENETICS
POPULATION

Group of individuals from the same species that lives in the same geographic area, which interbreeds Dynamic grow, expand, diminish & contract through changes in birth and death rates, through migration or through contact with other population
GENE POOL

All gametes made by all the breeding members of a population in a single generation
GENE FREQUENCY

Fraction of individuals of a population that possess a particular gene

HARDY-WEINBERG LAW
Conditions: NO selection Individuals of all genotypes have equal rates of survival & reproductive success NO new alleles are created or converted from 1 allele into another by mutation (NO mutation) NO migration into or out of the population LARGE population sampling errors & other random effects are negligible RANDOM mating

Significance of H-W
The conditions seldom occur in any population

Gene frequencies change in time

Gene pool is not stable

Gene frequencies change in time

Change in characteristics of the population

EVOLUTION of new species

According to Hardy-Weinberg Law.

IDEAL population
Frequency of alleles does not change from generation to generation POPULATION DOES NOT EVOLVE After one generation of random mating, offspring genotype frequencies can be predicted from the parent allele frequencies

Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium
Allele frequencies remain constant from generation to generation Genotype frequencies can be predicted from the allele frequencies. Consequences of H-W Law Dominant traits do not necessarily increase from one generation to the next. Genetic variability can be maintained in a population
Allele frequencies remain unchanged once established.

Involving H-W assumptions, knowing the frequency of 1 genotype allows the calculation of the frequencies of all other genotypes.

HARDY-WEINBERG EQUILIBRIUM
Egg fr (A) = p SPERM fr (A) = p fr (a) =q

fr (AA) = p2 fr (aA) = qp

fr (Aa) = pq fr (aa) = q2

fr (a) = q
p frequency of dominant allele in the population q frequency of recessive allele in the population

ALLELIC FREQUENCIES: GENOTYPIC FREQUENCIES:

p+q=1 p2 + 2pq + q2 = 1

Exceptions from H-W

When a small population breaks away or gets isolated, some alleles may be lost from the gene pool. Populations can become separated in their breeding as well as geographically. Mutation is continually introducing new variation into populations DISTURBANCE to H-W equilibrium Usually, there is some kind of selection natural or artificial which results in change of gene frequencies.

 In a herd of cattle, RR is red coat, Rr roan, and rr white, what is the genotypic frequency of Rr if the allelic frequency of R is .2?

ANSWER: 0.32

PROBLEM SOLVING
In a certain herd of 100 cattles, the gene frequencies of the R and r alleles were found to be .72 and .28 respectively. How many individuals have RR (red), Rr (roan) and rr (white) coats?

ANSWER:
52 red, 40 roan, 8 white

If there are 3 alleles.

e.g. ABO blood group designate the frequencies as p, q and r

p+q+r=1 p2 + q2 + r2 + 2pq + 2qr + 2pr = 1