BIOLOGY LAB

The allele frequency is the frequency of any given allele in a population, relative
to other alleles at the same locus. Alleles can be either dominant or recessive.
A dominant allele will always be expressed on the phenotype as it has the
same effect on an organism whether is paired with the same allele
(homozygous) or a different one (heterozygous), and the recessive allele will
only have an effect on the phenotype of the individual if paired with the same
allele (homozygous).
There are many factors that could change allelic frequencies; the genetic drift is
one of those basic mechanisms of evolution that could change them. It refers to
the chance; the probability that alleles remain on the next generation as some
individuals leave behind a few more descendants with its genes than other
individuals. There are also some factors that can affect the genetic drift, such as
population size, in the way that a small population has higher probabilities on
having changes on the allelic frequencies and a bigger population is more
stable.
The change on the gene pool where initially there were at least two variants of
a particular gene (allele) and finally only one of the alleles remain, so that there
doesn’t exist other alleles in the population for this locus is known as fixed
alleles or fixation.
In this case, the population size is of 20 individuals and the allele frequency is
of 0,25. There were 175 generations until the alleles of the 10 populations were
fixed.

Population Proportion of bw allele

1 1
2 1
3 0
4 0
5 0
6 0
7 0
8 0
9 1
10 1
Analyzing the results of the 10 populations’ proportion of bw allele, I can
conclude that the population tends to become extinct for some internal or
external cause as there were more 0 than 1 on the proportion of bw allele.

The frequencies have changed a lot, since first the frequencies were on a
straight line, then they start to change as gradually many of them grew apart
first down and then up, so the change on the allelic frequencies were fast as the
population was small.
Because of what I mention before, the population have a high risk of becoming
extinct as the population size is very small, in this case 20,

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. http://virtualbiologylab.org/NetWebHTML_FilesJan2016/GeneticDriftM
odel.html
2. http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/genetic-drift-and-effective-
3. http://groups.molbiosci.northwestern.edu/holmgren/Glossary/Definition
s/Def-F/fixed_allele.html
4. http://www.yourgenome.org/facts/what-are-dominant-and-recessive-
 alleles
5. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/inheritance/patterns/