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10 years ago
A man whose father was diagnosed with the dominant Huntington Disease (HD) marries a woman whose family has no history of the disease. In his early thirties, the man is also diagnosed with HD. What is the probability that the couple's second child will develop HD?

a couple problems with this question... there is no mention of the man's mother's genotype, which makes no sense since that can completely change the outcome of this problem. I drew out a pedigree chart... dominant HD for dad could mean he is either a heterozygote for the disease or a homozygous dominant, which leads to two completely different answers. and the man marrying a woman unaffected by the disease means either the kids are heterozygotes for HD or they could be 50/50 having and not having.   The answer choices are: 0, 1/16, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1.

Where am i going wrong here?
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10 years ago
You never can be sure about such things, so you will have to make assumptions.
When we talk about a dominant and quite rare disease such as HD, then we assume that people who have the disease are heterozygous. That is, because it is very unlikely for two parent to both have this rare disease and make a homozygous child.*

Mother is almost certainly homozygous to the normal allele. That is, because it is rare for people with no HD family history to have the disease.
From the above, we conclude that the child should have 50% probability to inherit the HD allele. The probability of the child to develop HD through his live, should be a bit less than 50%, because the person will have to live at least until 30-40 to be sure. However, the most suitable choice is surely 50%.
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