Hardy Weinberg Lab

Hardy Weinberg Lab

Purpose: To demonstrate the effects of Hardy Weinberg on the classroom population and to observe the different variations in data and how to utilize the data in the equations.

Background Research: The five criteria for Hardy- Weinberg equilibrium are no natural selection,  a large population size,  no gene flow, random mating, and no mutations.  If a population is in Hardy Weinberg equilibrium then microevolution can not occur and the allelic frequencies stay constant.  The purpose behind Hardy Weinberg equilibrium was to view a population in terms of it’s allele frequencies.  This idea suggested the A and a allele frequencies for a random gene locus can be represented by P and Q. The possible genotypes with these alleles are AA,aa, and Aa.   There are two equations to utilize when doing Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium they are,1.  p^2 +2pq + q^2=1 and 2. p+q=1. The first equation is used when solving problems that give genotypic frequencies for the population where as the second equation is used when solving problems that give the allele frequencies of the problem. If you are given the value for p or the value for q you can find everything else using the two equations.

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Results:

3. It predicts the new genotypic frequencies amongst the population. With this data we can find the new allele frequency of the dominant and recessive allele.
4. No, because when the experiment occurred the sample size was not in Hardy Weinberg equilibrium. Are population size was not large enough, and therefore was skewed by a few values and not balanced enough.
5. The population was large enough and that natural selection wouldn’t be possible because everyone was equally fit
6. No, because the allele will survive through the heterozygous, carrier, population. This will allow it to still exist except it might not be prevalent.
7. The heterozygotes have one allele from father and one allele from mother. This allows it to have more genetic variation. The heterozygotes are what allow the possibility of the recessive gene to still be prevalent. If the heterozygoes were removed then the population would only consist of the recessive phenotypes and the dominant phenotypes. If the two phenotypes crossed the recessive allele would be removed from the gene pool, and eventually it would seize to exist in the population.