Question

Brown coat color rabbits possess the dominant allele B, and white coat color rabbits possess the recessive allele b. If the frequency of the allele for white coat color is 0.04, what is the frequency of the dominant allele in the population?

Answer 1

Assuming Hardy-Weinberg equilbrium, we have

p + q = 1

where p = frequency of dominant allele and q = frequency of recessive allele. So

p = 1 - q = 1 - 0.04 = 0.96

Consequently we have

• p² = 0.9216 = frequency of hom ozygous domininant genotype

• pq = 0.0768 = frequency of heterozygous genotype

• q² = 0.0016 = frequency of hom ozygous recessive genotype

since

p² + 2pq + q² = 1