Question

A situation in which there are more than two alternative forms of a given gene would be called ________.

1) multiple alleles
2) alternation of generations
3) codominance
4) incomplete dominance
5) hemizygosity

Answer 1

A situation with more than two alternative forms of a gene is referred to as multiple alleles. While each individual organism has only two alleles for each gene, populations can contain many different alleles for a particular gene.

Step-by-step explanation:

Multiple alleles is a situation which consists of more than two alternative forms of a given gene. In biology, often more than two alleles exist at the population level for a particular gene. While an individual organism, being diploid, can only have two alleles for a specific gene, the population as a whole can have many different alleles present. Examples of such polymorphism include the human ABO blood group system. Multiple alleles exist for the ABO blood type gene, with three common alleles (IA, IB, and i) in the human population. In contrast, codominance is a situation where both alleles for the same characteristic are equally and fully expressed in the heterozygote, such as in the MN blood groups of humans.