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 complate dominance over the recessive allele. How would you use this information to solve for the frequency of the recessive allele?

A. square root of. 79
B. square root of .21
C. .79^2
D. 1 - square root of .21

Answer 1

B) The square root of .21

The Hardy-Weinberg equation describes genotype frequencies in a population where p^2 is the proportion of the population that is homozygous dominant, 2pq is the proportion of the population that is heterozygous, and q^2 is the proportion of the population that is homozygous recessive.

Since q^2 = 0.21,
q (the frequency of the recessive allele) will be the square root of 0.21.

Hope this helps :)