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Home Q & A Board Biology-Related Homework Help Genetics and Developmental Biology
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soccerlovex3 soccerlovex3
wrote...
11 years ago
Are dominant alleles always the most common? What determines the frequency of an allele in a population?   This is in Complete Dominance. Please help
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wrote...
#1
11 years ago
No, dominant alleles ARE NOT always more common than the recessive ones. For example, there is a dominant allele in humans that causes you to have 6 digits rather than 5. Another example is dwarfism which can be caused by a dominant allele.

What ultimately determines the frequency of alleles in a population is the selective advantage or disadvantage of the different alleles.

Any good genetics or biology textbook will have all the details.
wrote...
#2
11 years ago
Definitely not. What determines the frequency of an allele is whether having that allele helps people survive and have healthy children. If an allele does not have survival value, it will gradually be eliminated from the population. Whether or not it's dominant has no effect on the frequency of the gene (This is called the Hardy Weinberg Principle)
wrote...
#3
11 years ago
No, it Would Depend On Phenotype, if a Gene Expresses itself After the Reproductive Life of An Organism, it is Likely to Be Passed On.  About your Other Question, See Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium.
soccerryan Author
wrote...
#4
11 years ago
Alleles are alternative forms of a gene, distinguishable from others by the phenotypic effects (its appearance in people). We get one from our father, one from our mother.
Use the Punnet square to determine the odds of a phenotype from specific geneotypes. If our father gives us an Aa and our mother gives us an Aa. We could have AA, Aa, Aa, or aa. We now know that there are more than two alleles. But this is what we use to understand the effects.
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