Question

If a small founder population of 12 people ends up on a small island, and one member of the population had a mutation that creates a new allele, what is the likelihood that the allele will be eliminated from the population? Enter your answer as a percentage (not decimal), omit the percent sign however.

Answer 1

96

Step-by-step explanation:

This is genetic drift question, we can tell because the variable here is the population size. The probability of an allele of getting fixed is determined by its initial frequency, which is actually the probability of the allele of being fixed. So we need to calculate the initial allele frequency of this mutation:

Mutation allele frequency = # mutation alleles / total # of alleles = 1/24 = 0.04%

That is the probability of this allele to get fixed, so the probability of this allele getting eliminated is:

Elimination probability = 1 - fixing probability = 1- 0.04 = 0.96%

Answer: The probability of this allele getting eliminated is 96