Question

You are studying forget-me-nots and you discover that there are two flower colors (blue and white) that follow Mendelian inheritance patterns. Breeding data suggest that the blue allele is dominant to the white allele, and when you examine 200 flowers from your wild population you find 32 plants with white flowers. Based on this, what would you expect to be the frequency of the blue allele?

1) 13
2) 36
3) 50
4) 60
5) 84

Answer 1

Option C.

Based on the Hardy-Weinberg equation and the given data, the expected frequency of the blue allele in the population is 0.75 or 75%.

Step-by-step explanation:

Based on the Hardy-Weinberg equation, we can determine the expected allele frequencies for flower color.

The equation states that in a population in genetic equilibrium, the frequency of the dominant allele (blue) squared plus twice the frequency of the dominant allele (blue) times the frequency of the recessive allele (red) should equal 1.

Given that there are 600 blue flowers and 200 red flowers in the field, the total number of flowers is 800.

To calculate the frequency of the blue allele, we divide the number of blue flowers by the total number of flowers: 600 / 800 = 0.75. Therefore, the frequency of the blue allele is 0.75, or 75%.

Therefore, the correct answer is option c.

You would expect 100 homozygous dominant red flowers, 100 heterozygous red flowers, and 600 homozygous recessive blue flowers.