Question

In studying the gene pool of a population, you find that 21% of the population exhibits the recessive trait for eye color and the other 79% of the population exhibits the dominant trait. The dominant allele has complete dominance over the recessive allele. How would you use this information to solve for the frequency of the recessive allele?

a) 0.79

b) 0.21

c) 0.792

d) 1 - 0.21

Answer 1

To find the frequency of the recessive allele in the population, you can use the Hardy-Weinberg formula and take the square root of the q^2 value. In this case, the frequency of the recessive allele is approximately 0.458 (or 45.8%).

Step-by-step explanation:

To solve for the frequency of the recessive allele, we can use the Hardy-Weinberg formula: p^2 + 2pq + q^2 = 1. In this case, we know that 21% of the population exhibits the recessive trait, so q^2 = 0.21. To find the frequency of the recessive allele (q), we can take the square root of q^2. So q = √0.21. Therefore, the answer is approximately 0.458 (or 45.8%).