Question

In corn, kernel color is governed by a dominant allele for white color (W) and by a recessive allele (w). A random sample of 100 kernels from a population that is in H-W equilibrium reveals that 9 kernels are yellow (ww) and 91 kernels are white. Calculate the frequency of yellow alleles?

A. 0.30
B. 0.03
C. 0.5
D. 0.7

Answer 1

The frequency of the yellow allele (w) in the population is 0.3, calculated by taking the square root of the proportion of yellow kernels (ww) in the sample, which represents q² in the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.

Step-by-step explanation:

To calculate the frequency of the yellow allele (w) in kernels of corn, given that 9 out of 100 kernels are yellow (ww) and the population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, we need to use the Hardy-Weinberg principle. The frequency of the homozygous recessive genotype (ww) is the square of the frequency of the recessive allele (w), represented as q². From the sample, we have 9 yellow kernels, so q² = 9/100 = 0.09. To find the frequency of the recessive allele (q), we take the square root of q², which gives us q = √0.09. This simplifies to q = 0.3, so the frequency of the yellow allele (w) in the population is 0.3.